U.S. flag at Betsy Ross’ grave was stolen and then bizarrely returned on this week in Philly history
An anonymous note with the returned flag blamed the theft from Mount Moriah Cemetery on a 6-year-old.
On the United States’ 185th birthday, someone pulled down a 30-foot wooden pole at a West Philadelphia cemetery and carefully unknotted the 5-foot, 8-inch American flag that marked the grave of Betsy Ross.
And then an anonymous note with the returned flag blamed the theft on a 6-year-old.
“It seems to me,” George Wersderfer, the cemetery caretaker, told The Inquirer in 1961, “someone had a guilty conscience.”
The marker paid tribute to the colonial seamstress who is widely credited as the original maker of the Stars and Stripes.
And the 50-star flag soared — rain or shine, 24 hours a day — above her Mount Moriah Cemetery grave site, set on the south side near 65th Street and Kingsessing Avenue.
Until the morning of Independence Day, 1961.
Wersderfer discovered the theft and quickly substituted the flag with a spare before calling police. It had been the second theft of the flag in recent months, which was frustrating for several reasons, most notably the cost. The value of the flag at the time was placed at $12 ($129 today).
On July 5, veteran mail carrier Stanley W. Cones was on a routine parcel collection a few blocks away from the cemetery when he reached into a box at 58th Street and Chester Avenue.
The 54-year-old postman pulled out the stolen flag, which was carefully wrapped in brown paper.
A note, scribbled in red pencil, was attached:
“To all of us to whom this concerns: This flag fell into very good hands. Sorry it happen, but we think it was the work of a six-year-old. Who knows how old anybody is when it comes to the AMERICAN FLAG and the traditions it stands for, but don’t we all love Betsy Ross?”
It wasn’t signed.
Cones turned the flag over to the acting Philadelphia postmaster, Anthony I. Lambert, who returned it to the cemetery, unharmed.
A culprit was never publicly identified.
Ross was originally buried in a Free Quaker graveyard, but was moved when the city took over that land. She rested in Moriah from 1954 until her reburial in the mid-1970s at her namesake house in Old City, where she remains today.
The newer gravestone, however, is marked only by miniature stick flags.