History Of Flags

Two NJ museums displaying historic US flags just in time for the Fourth of July

PRINCETON BOROUGH — Rich in history, and full of nostalgia, flags have served as guides into battle and symbols of patriotism.

Thanks to those who have preserved their brilliant history, they can now be viewed in two displays just before the country’s most patriotic holiday: Civil War battle flags at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, and historic U.S. flags at the Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton.

Every six months, from now until December, the N.J. State Museum will show five different battle flags as part of commemorating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. One hundred flags will be unveiled by 2015.

Those flags might not even exist if it weren’t for 19 brave individuals who rescued the flags from a fire at the Statehouse in 1885.

“In addition to being military history artifacts, I think they’re a little more interesting to people than guns because they can also be considered fine works of art,” said curator at the New Jersey State Museum, Nicholas Ciotola.

The evolution of the flag throughout history drove antique parade flag collector and a U.S. Army Reserve veteran J. Richard Pierce to share his collection with the public at the Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton.

“The flag is such a meaningful symbol for America,” said Pierce.

His antique flag collection will be on display at Morven from July 1 to Oct. 30 as part of the exhibit, “The Stars and Stripes: Fabric of the American Spirit.”

Each framed and mounted flag will represent a moment in United States history, from Civil War flags, to Lincoln mourning flags, to the 48-star Pearl Harbor flags.

Pierce said the exhibit “shows people that over the course of our history the evolution of the flag, the evolution of the country from 15 states to 50 states. The flag is the history of our growth. It also shows the different creativity of flag makers through the years with some for the different designs with how the stars are laid out on the flag.”

He began collecting flags in 1991, but most of the collection showcases the antique flags he’s managed to obtain over the past 10 years. Pierce said the 108-flag exhibit will also display a rare find: three examples of 26-star flags, which was the official flag from 1837 to 1845. Most of the flags on display date from the early 1820s to World War II.

“The majority of these are prior to 1912 because before 1912, the way the stars were arranged on the flag could be any which way the flag maker would want it to be,” Pierce said.

YORK COUNTY | American flag represents nation at greatest, most ...

YORK COUNTY -- 

Today is Flag Day, one of 20 days Congress says the American flag should be flown.

The celebration traces its birth to the Second Continental Congress, which, on June 14, 1777, passed a resolution that the flag of these United States "be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white" and "the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

Various states celebrated a Flag Day, but it wasn't until 1916 that President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a national Flag Day. And it wasn't until 1949 that President Harry Truman set aside June 14 as the Flag Day.

For many, this is a day for the perfect image of the flag, one gently rippling in the breeze with broad stripes and bright stars. It is the flag once made by the thousands at the former Rock Hill Printing & Finishing Co. and after Sept. 11, 2001, at Tico Industries in Lancaster.

It is an image of majesty, an image of a grand old flag.

But the imperfect images, what country singer Johnny Cash called the ragged banner, are why we celebrate Flag Day.

These imperfect images are often captured during times of conflict, showing America at its best and its worst.

Joe Rosenthal captured one of the flag's signature moments when he photographed five Marines and Navy corpsman struggling to raise the flag Feb. 23, 1945, on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima. His iconic image won the Pulitzer Prize for photography that year. The Pulitzer jury called the photograph a "frozen flash of history."

Thomas Franklin won the 2002 Pulitzer for photography of his simple photo of three firemen struggling to raise an American flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Amid the chaos, firefighters William Eisengrein, George Johnson and Daniel McWilliams decided to raise the flag as a statement of loyalty and resilience.

"This was an important shot. It told more than just death and destruction. It said something to me about the strength of the American people and of these firemen having to battle the unimaginable," Franklin said of his photo.

And before there were photos, a poet captured the image of the flag and the uncertain future of a fledgling nation, watching for it through the night and into the morning.

We sing of bombs bursting in air and rocket's red glare, but Francis Scott Key also wrote:

Key's poem captured the flag in a way, historians say, that transformed it from an emblem into something familiar and evocative. The flag came to represent a country's values and what it stands for and what people are willing to do to protect it.

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The Flags of Civil War Missouri

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History of the Union Jack and flags of the empire, their origin, proportions and meanings as tracing the constitutional development of the British realm, and with references to other national ensigns

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