It’s the stuff of elementary school pageants and patriotic legend: In the capital of a new nation at war with its colonial rulers, a widowed seamstress made history when she fashioned the first American flag. Her name was Betsy Ross, and … stop right there.

Although a beloved national myth holds that the Philadelphia upholsterer helped design and stitch the emblem of the United States, Ross’s involvement in the history of the American flag is widely regarded as apocryphal.

“Every historian who’s looked into it has found no credible evidence that Betsy Ross made the first American flag, or helped design it, or even that there was a flag committee,” says journalist and historian Marc Leepson, author of Flag: An