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History of the Grand Union Flag

The Grand Union flag brings together two unmistakable elements: thirteen alternating red and white stripes and the earlier British Union flag in the upper corner. That canton combines the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, without the red diagonal cross added to the British design in 1801. Also commonly called the Continental Colors, the design belongs to the opening years of the American Revolution. It provides a striking visual contrast with the later Stars and Stripes: the striped field is familiar, but the corner still contains a British emblem rather than stars. The U.S. District Court's Historical Flag Project describes the design and its names.

The Continental Navy Connection

One of the flag's clearest historical associations is with the Continental ship Alfred. Built at Philadelphia in 1774 as the merchant vessel Black Prince, the ship was acquired and converted for naval service as Congress assembled an American fleet. The conversion involved strengthening the vessel and creating gunports, turning a commercial ship into a warship during a period of urgent military need. Naval History and Heritage Command recounts the ship's beginnings.

The Navy's history records that Lieutenant John Paul Jones raised the Grand Union flag aboard Alfred at Philadelphia when the ship was commissioned on December 3, 1775. Captain Dudley Saltonstall commanded the vessel, which became Commodore Esek Hopkins's flagship. This naval setting is central to the flag's significance: it connects the design with the practical creation of an American armed force before the Declaration of Independence, rather than only with a later ceremonial account of the nation's founding. The National Museum of the U.S. Navy also documents this association.

Prospect Hill: A Tradition with Important Uncertainty

A famous story identifies the Grand Union as the flag raised near George Washington's headquarters at Prospect Hill at the beginning of 1776. That identification should not be presented as settled fact. A detailed National Park Service study examines Washington's letter and other contemporary accounts and concludes that their references to a Union flag do not securely establish the striped design familiar today. The study also traces the later Grand Union terminology to nineteenth-century historical writing. The episode remains important to the flag's remembered history, but the evidence does not justify claiming that Washington unquestionably raised this exact pattern there. Read the NPS discussion, printed pages 384–386.

From a Union Canton to a Constellation

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress resolved that the United States flag should have thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen white stars on blue in its union. That documented decision is the clear milestone for the Stars and Stripes. Compared with the Grand Union, the distinctive change is in the canton: stars replace the combined British crosses while the thirteen-stripe arrangement remains. The National Archives reproduces the substance of the 1777 resolution.

The Grand Union is consequently best understood as an early Continental flag associated with the transition toward an independent American identity, not simply as the modern U.S. flag in an older form. Its design makes that transition visible. This modern historical reproduction presents the familiar striped-and-Union pattern for study and display; it is not an original Revolutionary-era artifact, proof of one disputed flag-raising, or a claim that Congress formally adopted it through the same 1777 resolution that established the Stars and Stripes.