Early Flags

This isn’t a complete set of flags from the American Revolution and the early years of the country. It’s a good sampling of the flags that were made and that they tried before deciding on the final one. The point of a flag is for troops in the confusion of battle to be able to identify easily which way is there side and which direction is the other. This way they know which way to attack and which way to retreat. Flags should be easily identified in chaos of a battle, in the midst of smoke and other things that might blur one’s view of them.

Some of these flags were used in land battles, like the Fort Moultrie flag shown at the top. It commissioned by Colonel William Moultrie and was used at the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina on June 28, 1776 – leading into the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Another example is the Bunker Hill flag, shown on the stamp at the bottom, used supposedly during the battle there in 1775 (see Bunker Hill).

Most of the flags for the stamps on third and four rows here were used by the Continental Navy. However, they’re very similar to the ones flow by the opposing British navy. I guess there’s less chance of confusion as to which ship is yours in a sea battle. The flags on the second row show some early attempts at a U.S. flag. There were several deviations of those, some with the stars on the blue field in different configurations.

Note

I’m not a fan of flags on stamps. I didn’t care much for the Overrun Countries stamps of 1943, but at least they had some sort of political message. There are many defnitives of the U.S. flags (see Pledge and G Flags). The United Nations had a flag series that went on for many years (see Flags: Canada & Somalia, Flags: Pakistan & Poland, Flags: Finland & India, Flags: Togo & Iceland, Flags: Japan, etc.). But I guess these are interesting and worth getting out of the way, a set of flags from the the early years.

Contains 10 spots: own 10 – 10 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Apr 27, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Flag Series

1.1	✓	1345	Ft. Moultrie Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., dark blue
2.1	✓	1346	Ft. McHenry Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
2.2	✓	1348	Bennington Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
2.3	✓	1350	First Stars & Stripes	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
3.1	✓	1347	Washington’s Cruisers Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., olive & dark blue
3.2	✓	1353	Philadelphia Lighthorse Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
3.3	✓	1349	Rhode Island Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
4.1	✓	1352	Grand Union Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
4.2	✓	1354	First Navy Jack	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor
5.1	✓	1351	Bunker Hill Flag	6c (jul 1968) comm., multicolor

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.