Hulbert (1776)

The Hulbert Flag begins in July, 1775 when John Hulbert, a cordwainer and magistrate, became captain of a company of Long Island minutemen. Two months later Hulbert's company moved to Ticonderoga to assist in the campaign to liberate the Champlain Valley. In November, the Long Islanders escorted a group of British prisoners to Trenton and Hulbert reported to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. After a short term of duty at Fort Constitution (Lee) on the Hudson, the company returned to their homes for discharge on January 18, 1776.

Exactly 150 years later, in 1926, a tattered old flag was found in a house once occupied by John Hulbert. The banner, which looks almost too much as an original model should look, was soon heralded as the prototype of the Stars and Stripes. One version of the story relates that the flag was made on Long Island before Hilbert's company left for Ticonderoga. Another version says it was made in the Champlain Valley to rival the banner of the British Seventh (Royal Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot, captured at Fort Chambly, October 18, 1775.

Regardless of its origin, the heart of the Hulbert flag claim lies in what is supposed to have taken place in Philadelphia when Hulbert reported to the Congress in November. Proponents of this account say that he brought the flag with him and that Francis Hopkinson, a delegate from New Jersey, may have been asked to make a sketch of it. This sketch supposedly formed the basis of the later Flag Resolution. However, all of this is speculative.

According to David Eggenberger's Flags of the U. S. A.:

"There can be little doubt that the Hulbert Flag is of the Revolutionary era. Its workmanship and its thirteen six-pointed stars confirm this. There is little reason to believe, however, that it predates the first flag resolution of 1777."