The Grand Union Flag

The Grand Union Flag Custom flags have become a rage in advertising and marketing lately. You cannot miss these banners in trade shows. Flags have come a long way from its original use as identifying national symbols.

General Washington raised the first union flag "in compliment to the United Colonies" on that fateful day in Prospect Hill. The original flag is frequently referred to as the Grand Union or Cambridge flag, which had seven red stripes and six white stripes, with a canton (a rectangular division or section) of blue charged with the Red Cross outlined in white and a white saltier. It has been said by some writers that Betsy Ross from Philadelphia was a contributor to the design and the maker of the first flag of the United States. Official records which have been examined have not confirmed this contention but it was known that she was paid for making flags for the government. The first evidence of the description of the flag of the United States can be seen in the journals of the Continental Congress indicating that a resolution was passed on June 14, 1777, "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 a new constellation." This description was not published in the newspapers until September of that year. In the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence the ships and galleys in the river were drawn up before the city dressed in the gayest manner with the colors of the US and streamers displayed. It is difficult to confirm many of the claims as to the flag's original designer, maker, or displayer, or to determine the design of the flag or flags which may have been flown on a particular occasion. In the John Trumbull painting of the surrender of Gen. Burgoyne at Saratoga, N. Y., which reposes the rotunda in The US Capitol at Washington, D.C., there, is shown the thirteen-star flag described above. The flag of the US, in the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, had not been created at the time of the actual crossing. The Third Maryland Infantry had a regimental flag which it used during the Revolutionary War period. It had thirteen alternating red and white stripes with a blue canton having a circle of twelve stars with one in the middle, all in white. This flag is often mistaken as a national flag. It is shown in the Trumbull painting of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The Grand Union Flag