STARS AND STRIPES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5200, 6 December 1895, Page 3

STARS AND STRIPES.

An order for adding another star f to the American flag was issued last September, says a southern contemporary. This brings the number up to forty-Aye, and represents Utah, who will attain her Statehood on the 4th July, 1898. The first legislative Act recorded relating to a national flag for tho new sovereignly was tho resolution of the American Congress in session at Philadephia on the 14th June, 1777, which established that the colours of thethirtcen United States should bo thirteen stripes alternate red and white, and that the Union should be thirteen stars white on a blue field, Tho Union flag at Washington's headSuarters at Cambridge on the 2nd anuary, 1776, had tho thirteen stripes aB now, but in place of the stare in the corner there were the crosses of St. George and St. indrew on a blue ground. It is claimed for Mrs John lloss, upholstoror, of Archer-street, Philadelphia, thatshe first mado tho flag of the Stars and Stripes in June, 1776, from a design drawn by Washington in pencil in Lor back parlour, The resolution

of the 14th Juno wasnot promulgated - until the 3rd September, 1777, and v on tlio 11 tli of that mouth the Stars and Stripes were borne at the battle of Brandywino. The United States ship Banger, Captain Paul Jones, arrived in a French port or, December Ist of the same year; and on February 14th, 1778, the Stars and Stripes received the first salute ever paid them by foreign warships. The flag remained unchanged until 1795, when tbe number of stripes was augmonted to fifteen, and the Union represented by fifteen stars. Kentucky and Vermont had boon added j to the Union. In 1818, five other States had been added, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, and Mississippi, On the 18th of April, 1888, it was enacted that on the admission of every new State one star should be added on tlio 4th of July succeeding each admission, and that the stripes should bo reduced to tbe original number of tbirteon, During

the war with Moxico the flag bore twenty-nine stars, during the Civil War thirty-five, and since July 4th, • 1891, it has borne forty-four, until the admission of the present one. Tlio new order was accompanied by another altering the dimensions of the flag from 6ft by sft to sft Gin by 4ft 4in,