Press release
Rootseekers were pleased to have as their speaker at our June 15 meeting Ruth Shelton who came all the way from Crowley to speak to us about the “Star Spangled Banner Flag.” Most of us know that our United States Flag, which many of us proudly display using our residential flagpoles, has a stripe for each of the thirteen colonies but did you know that the state of Vermont became our 14th state on March 4, 1791 and Kentucky became the 15th state on June 1, 1792. So two more stripes were added to the flag. In 1813 Major George Armistead commissioned Mary Pickersgill to make a 15 stripe flag for Baltimore’s Fort McHenry that would be so large (30×42) that the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a great distance. The main flag was made of woolen bunting material and weighed 50 pounds. It took 11 men to raise it onto a 90 foot flagpole. This flag could not be used in rainy weather because the wool would shrink so a smaller one (17×25) was made to fly in bad weather made of cotton. This flag became an official US flag on May 1, 1795.
While negotiating a prisoner exchange aboard a British ship, Francis Scott Key saw the flag, and this inspired him to pen the words to the poem ‘The Defense of Fort McHenry” that later became the National Anthem of the United States in 1931. This 15 stripe flag was used in our country for 23 years until the flag act of 1818 restored it to the 13 stripes with a star for each state.
Ruth was born in Eustace and grew up in the same area. She has one son who lives in Benbrook, two grandsons and three great grandchildren living in Ft. Worth. Ruth belongs to the Rootseekers, Sarah Maples DAR, the UDC and many others and keeps busy with all these organizations. Ruth we hope to see you again soon.