According to family legend, Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag in 1776 and made the first U.S. flag for George Washington. Her grandson William Canby reported this tradition, saying in his 1870 paper that Betsy herself had passed the story to him, but he also wrote that after extensively searching government archives he found not a shred of evidence for it. He found no record of a Committee of Congress in 1776 working on a new flag, although the Marine Committee was procuring the well-documented Continental Colors design flags for ships at the time.