I keep a small framed reproduction of the Betsy Ross flag in my hallway, mostly because my grandmother insisted Betsy was a distant cousin on her mother's side. (She was not. I checked. Repeatedly.) But the family story sent me down a research rabbit hole years ago, and I have been fascinated by the history of flags ever since. As an archivist, I cannot resist a primary source, and flags turn out to be one of the oldest pieces of human paperwork we have.
Before there was cloth, there was a pole
It turns out the very first flags were not flags at all in the way we picture them. They were called vexilloids, from the Latin vexillum, meaning a kind of military banner. The discipline of studying flags, vexillology, takes its name from the same root.
The oldest known flag-like object is a small bronze artifact unearthed at Shahdad in present-day Iran, dated by archaeologists to roughly 2400 BC. It shows a seated goddess flanked by two animals, mounted on what would have been a pole. Egyptian armies, around 3100 BC, carried tall standards topped with carved animals or symbols of local gods so that troops could find their unit in the chaos of a battlefield. What most people don't realize is that the cloth banners we picture today did not become common until the Roman period, when soldiers began attaching dyed fabric to those poles to make them visible from a greater distance.
So the next time someone tells you flags are 4,000 years old, you can gently correct them. The poles are. The cloth came later.
Why we needed them in the first place
Flags solved a very practical problem. A medieval knight in full armor was, frankly, indistinguishable from any other knight in full armor. A banner carried by his squire told friend from foe, and told the people back home which lord had survived the day. From that battlefield necessity grew heraldry, and from heraldry grew the national flags we recognize now.
The flag also served as a kind of mobile address. Ships needed to identify themselves at sea. Diplomatic envoys needed to mark their tents. Religious processions needed banners to lead the faithful. The function never really changed; only the materials and the symbols did.
The American flag and the Betsy Ross question
Here is where I have to disappoint a few readers, including my late grandmother. The Continental Congress did pass a Flag Resolution on June 14, 1777, which is why we celebrate Flag Day on that date. The text is short and worth quoting: "That the Flag of the united states be 13 stripes alternate red and white, that the Union be 13 stars white in a blue field representing a new constellation."
The story that Betsy Ross was approached by George Washington in 1776 and produced the first flag with five-pointed stars was first told publicly in 1870, by her grandson William Canby, nearly a century after the fact. Historians have not found a single contemporary document confirming it. There was no congressional flag committee in 1776. Washington was not even a member of Congress.
Was Betsy Ross a flagmaker? Yes, absolutely. She was a Philadelphia upholsterer who sewed flags, tents, and uniforms for the Continental forces. Did she design the first one? The historical record actually points more strongly to Francis Hopkinson, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who later sent Congress a bill (unpaid, of course) for designing the flag. None of this makes the Betsy Ross story untrue, exactly. It just means we cannot prove it. As I tell people in the genealogy society, oral history is precious, but a deed is better.
What the colors and shapes actually mean
Flag colors are not chosen at random. Most national flag traditions assign rough meanings to each one:
- Red usually represents bloodshed, courage, or revolution.
- White stands for peace, purity, or, in the case of surrender, a willingness to stop fighting.
- Blue is often associated with vigilance, justice, or the sea and sky.
- Green typically points to the land, agriculture, or, in many cases, Islam.
- Black can signify mourning, determination, or, more recently, anti-colonial struggle.
- Yellow or gold represents wealth, sunlight, or mineral resources.
A few specific flags have crossed cultures so completely that their meaning is universal. A white flag means a request for parley or surrender. A red flag warns of danger. The skull and crossbones, the so-called Jolly Roger, has meant piracy at sea since at least the early 1700s, although the actual designs varied wildly from one captain to the next.
States are quietly rewriting their flags
One of the most interesting flag stories of the past few years has happened right here in the United States. Vexillologists, particularly Ted Kaye and the North American Vexillological Association, have long argued that many state flags are essentially indecipherable. They tend to be a state seal slapped onto a blue background, which violates almost every principle of good flag design.
In 2024, two states actually did something about it. Utah adopted a new flag on March 9, 2024, featuring a beehive (the state symbol) inside a hexagon on red, white, and blue bands. Minnesota followed on May 11, 2024, with a striking design featuring a stylized state outline and an eight-point star, a nod to its motto, L'Étoile du Nord, the Star of the North. Illinois, Maine, and Massachusetts are all reportedly considering similar redesigns. Whether you love or hate the new ones, it is the most active period for state flag change in living memory.
Flag etiquette worth knowing
For those of us who fly the American flag at home, the U.S. Flag Code has rules that are easy to forget. A few that come up often:
- When raising the flag to half-staff, hoist it briskly to the top first, then lower it slowly to the halfway point.
- On Memorial Day, the flag is at half-staff only from sunrise until noon. After noon, it returns to full staff.
- The flag flies at half-staff for thirty days following the death of a sitting or former president, and ten days for a sitting vice president, chief justice, or speaker of the House.
- If your American flag is flown at half-staff, any state or organizational flags on the same pole or nearby poles should also be lowered.
- A worn or damaged flag should be retired with dignity, traditionally by burning. Many American Legion posts and Scout troops will accept retired flags and handle the ceremony for you.
A small thing worth thinking about
I'll leave you with a thought I find myself returning to. A flag is one of the few designed objects that is meant to be seen by everyone in a community at once. It hangs in classrooms, courthouses, and cemeteries. It travels with soldiers and is folded into a triangle for a widow at a funeral. It is, in a real sense, a piece of communal property, even though no one owns it.
That is why every change, every redesign, every old flag retired and new one raised, is worth paying attention to. The cloth is light. The history it carries is not. If you have a few minutes this week, take a closer look at whatever flag flies near your home, and consider what the people who designed it were trying to say.
