Congress also said he hadn't worked alone, although he remains the only person known to have taken credit for designing the Stars and Stripes. His claim was eventually rejected, on the grounds that as a civil servant, Hopkinson had already been paid for his work. In May 1780, Hopkinson wrote to the Continental Admiralty Board, saying that while his designs were "Labours of Fancy," favors he provided to his country free of charge, he would appreciate a "Quarter cask of the public wine" as a reward. The version of the flag with the stars in a circle, the one most associated with Ross and pictured in a 1779 portrait of George Washington, was never regularly used, according to "Our Flag." In fact, the placement of the stars wasn't standardized until 1912. Based on images and symbols in his heraldic designs, historians believe Hopkinson's flag featured six-pointed stars in a staggered pattern, although parallel placement became more popular. Those seals are important, for no examples of Hopkinson's original flag exist, according to Williams. A fourth seal, one for the Continental Board of War and Ordnance, is also credited to Hopkinson, but was never adopted. In addition, he claimed to have designed the Continental currency and seals for the Admiralty and Treasury boards. Incidentally, Hopkinson was also treasurer of loans and a consultant for a committee created to design the Great Seal of the United States. Francis Hopkinson was a member of the Continental Naval Board and a New Jersey congressman, a poet and a lawyer, a musician and a judge, an artist and a civil servant, according to author and flag historian Earl P. Instead, they point to one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. However, there's no proof that the flag she sewed was actually the first Stars and Stripes, and because the claim dates from her grandson in the 1870s, most historians are skeptical. And records show the Pennsylvania State Navy Board did in fact pay Ross a large sum of money for making flags - "ship's colours" - in 1777. She also had connections to Washington and to Robert Morris, who served on the Marine and Maritime Committees, and donated the ship that would become Alfred to the Continental Navy. The story is plausible: Ross' uncle-in-law was George Ross, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the men who gave Ross the commission. The Marine Committee, "Resolved," June 14, "that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing new constellation."Īmerican legend says that this is the flag Washington had asked Betsy Ross to sew the previous year, and that it was Ross who suggested five-point stars. In 1777, after the fledgling country declared its independence, the Continental Congress wanted a new flag, one without a throwback to Britain. As a result, the standard is also known as the Continental Colors. 1, 1776, to a 13-gun salute, both in defiance of a British order to surrender and to honor his reorganized Army. George Washington hoisted on Prospect Hill during the Siege of Boston, Jan. Many historians believe the Grand Union flag was also the flag newly appointed Commander-in-Chief Gen. It would have been easy to sew white stripes on existing red Royal Navy ensigns, and the Sons of Liberty flag already alternated red and white stripes.ĭenmark and the Netherlands became the first countries to officially salute the United States, when their ships returned gun salutes from American ships flying Grand Union flags in the Caribbean in the fall of 1776. No one knows who designed the American version or why, although a seamstress in Philadelphia named Margaret Manny sewed flags for the Alfred around this time. Jones later called it the "flag of Freedom," and said he "attended it, with veneration, ever since on the ocean."įeaturing seven red stripes and six white to recognize the 13 colonies, with a British flag in canton (the upper left corner), the Grand Union flag closely matched the flag of the British East India Company. 3, 1775, while she was anchored in Philadelphia on the Delaware River, according to "Our Flag," by the Government Printing Office. John Paul Jones became the first person to raise it above a Continental warship when he hoisted it on the Navy's first flagship, Alfred, Dec. The first national flag of the united colonies, the Grand Union flag, was a naval ensign.
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