Bennington flag
A flag of thirteen stripes, white at the top and bottom, with “76” under an arch of stars in the blue canton, long said to have flown at the Battle of Bennington in 1777. The Bennington Museum, which owns it, dates it to between 1812 and 1830, because it is made entirely of cotton.
Meaning
The museum’s catalogue describes a white “76” under a rounded arch of eleven seven-pointed stars, with two more stars in the upper corners of the blue canton, and thirteen stripes alternating white and red with white on the top and bottom. It is about 292 by 166 cm (115 by 65½ inches). Its use of white for the outer stripes is unique, the museum says. The flag is also called the Fillmore flag, after the family who kept it for over a century. The Bennington Museum in Vermont shows it today in a plexiglass case, with the light kept low to slow the fading, since its red and blue have mostly faded to shades of grey.
Origin and history
Nathaniel Fillmore, a veteran of the Battle of Bennington, probably gave the flag to his nephew Septa Fillmore soon after war broke out with Britain in 1812, by the museum’s account, and Colonel Septa Fillmore probably displayed it at Plattsburgh, New York, where he held a command. It passed to his nephew Philetus P. Fillmore, who hung it outside his home in Aurora, Illinois, for the centennial of 1876. Franklin Bosworth Fillmore carried it at the head of a parade of the National Encampment of the Grand Army in Minnesota in 1887, where a souvenir hunter cut away one of the stars and the top white stripe. Maude Fillmore Wilson gave it to the museum in 1926, and it was on display until conservation began in 1995.
When was the Bennington flag made?
In the 19th century, according to both the Bennington Museum and the House of Representatives’ history, though they give different years. A study of the fibres during the conservation of 1996 found the flag entirely of cotton, the Bennington Museum reports, and cotton fabric was not readily available in America until after 1800; the single and double ply yarns are typical of the early years of cotton milling. The museum dates it to 1812–1830 and ties it to the War of 1812, reading the “76” as a memory of a Revolutionary victory. The House of Representatives’ history “Our Flag” (1989) says instead that it was probably made for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in 1826. Earlier writers had it carried at the battle on 16 August 1777, which the museum now calls improbable.
The flags of the battle itself
“Our Flag” records a tradition that the green flag of the Green Mountain Boys, the militia brigade of General John Stark, flew at Bennington. Another relic came from Stark’s family. The historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich writes that five of his granddaughters brought a canton of faded blue silk, painted with thirteen five-pointed stars, to the centennial of the battle in August 1877, and that in 1927 his great-great-granddaughter Jennie Osborne gave the Bennington Museum an affidavit describing it and its descent through the family.
Often confused with
The Betsy Ross flag has thirteen five-pointed stars in a full circle, no number, and red stripes on the outside.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comFlag of the United StatesThe thirteen stripes of the Stars and Stripes as flown today.Read next
- Next in Historical flagsSerapis flagThe ensign John Paul Jones flew on the captured British warship Serapis at Texel in the Dutch Republic in 1779, with stripes of red, white and blue and thirteen eight-pointed stars on blue. It was made to the description Benjamin Franklin and John Adams had given of the American flag, and the Dutch recorded it in a sketch.
- The same shape in Chinese radicalsMù 目The character for ‘eye’, and radical 109 of the 214 Kangxi radicals, under which characters for looking and seeing are filed.
See also
Betsy Ross flag, Jolly Roger, Blackbeard’s flag, Calico Jack’s flag, Bartholomew Roberts’s flag, Emanuel Wynne’s flag.
Sources
- Bennington Flag (Bennington Museum), Bennington Museum, online collection, object record A60, “Flag” (Bennington or “Fillmore” flag), Bennington Museum, Year range; Description; Width and Height; Information
- Our Flag (H. Doc. 100-247), section 2, House Document 100-247, Our Flag: “Early American Flags” and “Historical Flags”, U.S. House of Representatives (via NPS History), Historical Flags: Green Mountain Boys; Bennington Flag
- How Betsy Ross Became Famous, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “How Betsy Ross Became Famous: Oral tradition, nationalism, and the invention of history”, Common-place, Common-place: The Journal of Early American Life, article text
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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