Historians speculate whether 1775 flag was first version of Old Glory

A flag owned by the Suffolk Historical Society might have been the first — or one of the first — versions of Old Glory but definitive proof has yet to be found, experts said.

Still, before Flag Day on Tuesday, historians continue to speculate about the one Continental Army Capt. John Hulbert of Bridgehampton flew as early as 1775, with 13 stars and stripes. 

"Historians remain strongly divided" about whether this is the first American flag," said Victoria Berger, the historical society's executive director. "Controversy aside, the Hulbert Flag is nationally recognized as of one of the earliest examples of the American flag.” 

Hulbert's flag is much smaller than many in an era when such flags commonly were displayed by forts or ships. Yet it might have been flown when his Bridgehampton Company of the 3rd New York Regiment marched up to Fort Ticonderoga, before upholsterer Betsy Ross created a more prominently known American flag.

The fort was captured by Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys that May. Hulbert’s soldiers escorted British prisoners to Trenton, New Jersey, said Matthew Keagle, curator of collections at Fort Ticonderoga, and then onto Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress was meeting, and where his flag might have inspired flag designers.

The historical society, based in Riverhead, takes no position on whether it is the country’s first. But historians say it is a treasure that reveals the 13 colonies were forging a group identity.

It was only in 1777 that "the American military is ordered by Congress to begin marking things like weapons with things like 'U.S.' … to show this material belongs to the Army of the United States,” Keagle said, noting that the American flag is one of the few that evolved as the country grew by adding stars. 

Skeptics doubt how much credit is really due to Ross, or Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, who signed the Declaration of Independence but whose bill for designing the flag Congress declined to pay.

Marla R. Miller, a University of Massachusetts Amherst distinguished history professor who wrote “Betsy Ross and the Making of America,” noted Ross only said she met George Washington and suggested "based on her experience as a craftswoman — that the flag’s stars be five-pointed …"

Marc Leepson, a historian who wrote "Flag: an American Biography," said the first designer may never be known. "Until we get more evidence other than handed-down stories, we can't say definitively either way." 

Hulbert’s flag was found in 1926 in a Bridgehampton attic. A New York Times article in 1927 and a 1932 research paper by Morton Pennypacker, who would later become the Suffolk County historian, led to its display at the 1940 World's Fair in Queens.

While the flag is too fragile to undergo more tests, Fonda G. Thomsen, then the director of Textile Preservation Associates Inc. in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in a report funded by Newsday in 1997, found large sections sewn with thread not used before 1840, echoing what a Smithsonian Institution curator said in 1972.

But the speculation among historians continues. Rabbit Goody, of Thistle Hill Weavers in upstate Cherry Valley, who twice examined it, said her colleagues were misled by all the flag's repairs and their apparent unfamiliarity with flag-making.

"The flag is 18th century; there isn’t any question about that," Goody maintained.