You may have noticed that the new flags placed on the Ferguson flag pole for Flag Day in June were shredded in the storms. These are both heavy duty, high wind flags, so there must have been a major wind with the rains.
And that brings us to “What Flag for 1926 Sesquicentennial”? Mrs. Ferguson writes in The Watonga Republican Oct 12, 1925 edition “When the question of selecting a suitable flag for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition arose, it became at once evident that because of the nature of the event which the Exposition was to celebrate, only one standard could properly be used. This was the flag of the United States of America.
With a few exceptions, our flag is the oldest in the world. It has stood substantially the same for nearly 150 years, while in the other lands national emblems have changed as empires have fallen and vast political upheaval brought with them new banners to claim the allegiance of the populace.
Contrary to general belief the flag of the United States was not an inspired creation. It was forged from the continental Union flag by substituting in the blue canton a circlet of thirteen stars for two crosses -St. George’s and St. Andrew’s- of Britain. The stripes were already there.
George Washington described its making thus. ‘We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty.’
It was a year after the signing of the Declaration of the Independence that the first legislation for the flag was enacted. On June 14, 1777, now celebrated by us as Flag Day, Congress sitting in Philadelphia, adopted the following resolution.
“Resolved, that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, and the union be thirteen stars, while on a blue field, representing a new constellation”. This was the first official step toward the adoption of our national emblem.”
By the time Mrs. Ferguson served on the Advisory Commission 150 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the number of states/stars had grown to 48. And this was the flag of the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial of 1926.