A Smithsonian magazine special report
You Can Now See Betsy Ross’ Sewing Table in Philadelphia, Thanks to a Flag Day Donation From Her Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson
The origins of the Stars and Stripes are murky, but generations of Americans have admired stories about Ross creating the first American flag
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For years, Eric Conrad had a small wooden table near the kitchen of his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Covered by a protective pane of glass, it typically held a bouquet of fresh flowers from his garden.
The table had been in his family for generations, dating all the way back to the time of the American Revolution. Centuries ago, it belonged to his great-great-great-great grandmother, Betsy Ross, the seamstress rumored to have stitched the United States of America’s first flag.
But after serving as the table’s caretaker for more than a decade, Conrad decided it was time to part ways with the family heirloom and let other Americans enjoy it. On June 14—Flag Day—he officially donated the table to the Betsy Ross House, a museum located inside Ross’ former home in Philadelphia. The desk is now on view, just in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations.
“We need to remind people what they fought for,” Conrad tells CBS Philadelphia’s Nikki DeMentri and Will Kenworthy. “Betsy and her husband all had gone through the war and such an effort to get freedom.”
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Conrad grew up around the table, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dana Munro. As a child, he remembers, he went to his great-uncle’s house and rifle through its drawers to find and read issues of National Geographic. After his great-uncle died in the 1970s, the table next passed to his mother, who situated it near her kitchen and hung a painting of the Betsy Ross House above it.
Conrad got the table after his mother died. He tells KYW Newsradio’s Matt Coughlin he received offers for it over the years, but never seriously considered them because he thought it should be at the Betsy Ross House.
Ross has a complicated legacy. Though she’s long been credited with sewing America’s first flag, historians now suspect the story may be more myth than fact. According to the Smithsonian’s “Sidedoor” podcast, the legend gained traction in 1870, after William Canby, Ross’ grandson, delivered a speech to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania claiming that his grandmother had stitched the nation’s first flag.
The tale was further reinforced by a painting called Birth of Our Nation’s Flag. Created by Charles Weisgerber in the 1890s, it depicts Ross sitting in her parlor with the first American flag on her lap while members of the Continental Congress’ flag committee stood nearby. A few years later, Weisgerber helped found the American Flag House and Betsy Ross Memorial Association, which raised funds to save Ross’ Philadelphia home—now the museum—from demolition.
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When Conrad delivered the table to the Betsy Ross House, it had a mismatched lower-left drawer. According to Conrad, the drawer had been replaced at some point because Ross had removed the original and used it as a mobile sewing basket, per KYW Newsradio.
The table also had wooden knobs, which someone had swapped in for the original batwing drawer pulls, Lisa Acker Moulder, the director of the Betsy Ross House, tells Smithsonian magazine in an email.
To prepare the table for permanent display, the museum’s conservator created a new drawer that matches the color, style and construction of the originals, and replaced the wooden knobs with custom-made batwing brasses.
Fun fact: Three graves
Betsy Ross was buried three times, reported Alfred Lubrano for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2022, although with each transfer, it became harder to track what physical remains actually moved where. The first time was in a Quaker cemetery. When that closed, she was moved to a different Philadelphia cemetery, without a grave marker. In 1975, she was moved again to the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House.
From now through the Fourth of July, it’s being shown alongside Ross’ snuffbox, petticoat, spectacles and Bible at Flagmakers’ Hall, an exhibition space located around the corner from the museum. After the holiday, it will be moved into Ross’ bedroom inside the museum, per the Inquirer.
Whether or not Ross sewed the nation’s first flag, her story is still important, Marla Miller, a historian and the author of Betsy Ross and the Making of America, tells the Inquirer. Ross represents “hundreds of Philadelphia women” who endured trials and tribulations while living in the fledgling nation in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Miller says.
“Her historical celebrity opens the door on stories about labor history, about the revolution, about the occupation of Philadelphia, about women in the war machine … It opens the window on the founding of the Republic,” Miller adds. “I always kind of think, ‘Come for the flag, stay for the history.’”
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