A Woman of Mystery

Percy Moran, The Birth of Old Glory (1917). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
From: http://commonplace.online/article/how-betsy-ross-became-famous/

While people know George Washington asked Betsy Ross to sew the first U.S. flag, few are aware of her personal history. Born into a Quaker family, the eighth of seventeen children, Betsy moved to Philadelphia at age three. Following her formal education, she apprenticed to an upholsterer, where she met her first husband, a fellow apprentice and Anglican. Because her family did not approve, they eloped. He died two years later. In 1774, Betsy made bed hangings for George Washington. Finding her both trustworthy and skilled, Washington commissioned her, a childless widow of twenty-four, to make a flag he designed.