It began with an unmarked, unremarkable box tucked in a corner of a garage in California. Inside, under miscellaneous letters and old high school yearbooks, was a smaller shoe box. Inside that, under old coins and a numismatist pamphlet, lay the 240-year-old diary of sailor John Claypoole, a Revolutionary War prisoner of war and later the third husband of the flagmaker known as Betsy Ross.
“It was wrapped in a piece of paper that said, ‘John Claypoole diary to be handled with great care,’ which was sort of funny we found it in a paper shoe box in a box in this garage,” recalled Aileen Edge, who with her husband uncovered the priceless item in her mother’s Marin County home in June 2020.
In the journal, Claypoole describes his capture by the British while a privateer at sea, being charged with high treason for “being found in arms and in open rebellion” against the king, and his time at Old Mill Prison near Plymouth. He wrote about the hardships of life in captivity; about another inmate’s escape attempt that ended with the man being shot; about watching, in March 1782, as “M. Joseph Ashburn departed this life after an illness of about a week which he bore with amazing fortitude & resignation.”
At the time of his death, Joseph Ashburn was married to Betsy Ross. Her first husband, John Ross, had also died during the war.
The diary predates Claypoole’s relationship with Ross, so she is not mentioned in it. But the document, and a Claypoole family Bible found around the same time, gives perspective to Ross’s place in the nation’s founding, said Philip Mead, chief historian and curator at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution, which put both items on exhibit during the July Fourth weekend. While a transcription of Claypoole’s diary has existed for years, this is proof that what it contained is correct.
“This really taps into the profound sacrifices she and her family made to create the United States. Whether she created the first flag or not, she certainly helped create the country,” Mead said. “It’s crucial to have the original documents because they are the only unimpeachable sources. It wasn’t that we didn’t know about these great sacrifices, but this confirms it.”