The History of the Birthday of Our Stars and Stripes

Our American Flag represents democracy, freedom, liberty, the unity of our nation, and the love for our country. The flag stands for everything that our nation’s soldiers fight for, past, present, and future. The fifty stars represent the fifty US states, the blue field behind the stars stands for perseverance, justice and vigilance, and the alternating red and white stripes represent the thirteen original colonies. As George Washington said, “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.”


The Father of Flag Day, Bernard John Cigrand was very proud of his country and its flag. So proud in fact, that in 1885 in a one room schoolhouse called Stony Hill School in Waubeka, Wisconsin when he was just nineteen years old, Cigrand declared that June 14th should be the birthday of the American Flag. He dedicated his life to instilling children and all Americans with the same patriotism and love for our flag and country that he held in his heart. In the book, The Real Bernard J. Cigrand: Father of Flag Day by James L. Brown, it is said that Cigrand made 2,188 speeches around the country about patriotism and our flag and June 14th being instated as its birthday. Later, Cigrand became the president of the American Flag Day Association and the National Flag Day Society. A statue of his bust stands at the National Flag Day Americanism Center in Waubeka, Wisconsin and Stony Hill School is now a historical site. 

On June 14th, 1889 another school leader, George Bolch, the principle of a public kindergarten school in New York, held a ceremony to celebrate the US flag. Soon after, other places began celebrating the flag on June 14th including the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, the State Board of Education of New York, and the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution. In 1893 J. Granville Leach, historian of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, suggested that the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames of America make June 14th the official day for all citizens of Philadelphia to exhibit the American Flag. The suggestion was recognized two weeks later and Flag Day became a day for celebration in Philadelphia where people gathered in Independence Square to sing patriotic songs, carry flags, and make speeches. Pennsylvania was the first state to legalize June 14th as Flag Day in 1937. 

Many people, leaders, organizations, mayors, and five presidents have fought to make Flag Day a national holiday. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge both made recommendations for the nationalization of this holiday. Finally, in 1949 Congress approved of making Flag Day a nationally celebrated holiday and president Harry S. Truman signed it into law.

Today, people celebrate Flag Day all over America. Much celebrated like Memorial Day or Independence Day, Flag Day is celebrated with waving flags, displays of flags in public buildings, parades in major cities, and school dismissal. Flag Day is also a celebration of the men and women in the armed forces who have fought and are still fighting for our country.    

The Father of the American Revolution: Samuel Slater

Samuel Slater was known as the “father of the American factory system, the father of American industry, and the founder of the American Industrial Revolution.” He was born in Derbyshire, England on June 9th, 1768. He became a part of the textile industry in 1783 when he became an apprentice for the owner of a factory mill, Jedediah Strutt. Soon after being apprenticed, he became superintendent of Strutt’s mill.

Six years later in 1789, Slater secretly emigrated to the United States when he found that they were offering rewards for textile information. Britain had forbidden textile workers from leaving for fear that they would share valuable textile information. Slater had dreamed of starting a textile business and since he believed that Britain was at its peak, he found that the US was the right place to be. He landed in New York in late 1789 having memorized textile information to share with America. He took a job at the New York Manufacturing Industry soon after he landed.

In 1790 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Slater and Moses Brown, a Quaker merchant, built the first water-powered cotton spinning mill. At first, workers running on a treadmill powered the machine, but later a waterwheel was added to run the machine. With the development of this machine, came the start of the spinning industry. Slater also built many other textile machines to help improve the industry. He was the first person to emigrate to the US that knew how to build and run textile machines.

In 1793, Slater built the first profitable water-powered textile mill in Pawtucket Rhode Island with funding from Providence investors. Slater easily found many employees. He hired children, adults, and families. Slater built a larger mill on his own in 1797 and called it the White mill. In 1803, along with his brother, he built a little mill village called Slatersville in Rhode Island where he provided housing, a company store, and a large mill where people could work. This idea of creating a “village” for workers, came to be known as the Rhode Island System. This system was copied for years in textile industries in the United States. The cotton industry continued to improve for the next ten years all due to Slater’s revolutionary ideas. Samuel Slater died in 1835 at the age of sixty-seven.

If you would like to find out more about Samuel Slater feel free to check out my sources: http://www.woonsocket.org/slaterhist.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventors/a/Samuel_Slater.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/slater_hi.html

http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/fall_98/hulton/slater.htm