A Flag for the State House

In autumn of 1783, men like Jubb Fowler and John Shaw were hurriedly preparing for the arrival of Congress to the Maryland State House on November 26, 1783. Actually a cabinetmaker by trade, the State House hired John Shaw for a variety of tasks. Among Shaw’s various projects in late 1783, perhaps the most famous is what is now known as the “John Shaw flag.”

This watercolor painted by Charles Cotton Millbourne c.1794 is the best known image of a depiction of the original "John Shaw flag." View of Annapolis, courtesy of the Hammond Harwood House Association. You may also view their blog here.

On November 12, 1783, the state paid Messrs C. and R. Johnson of Baltimore for purchasing “2 pieces of red bunting, 2 ditto white bunting, 19½ yards blue ditto. The above, to make a pair of colours for the State at the request of the Gov & Council and Ordered of the purchaser in Balto.”[1] Shaw was paid for providing two matching flags - both were nine by twenty-three feet and were of an unusual design. Descriptions of the eighteenth-century Shaw flag have always been vague, but it was certainly built according to the 1777 resolution by Congress that the nation’s flag must have “13 stripes alternating red and white” and “13 stars white on a field of blue representing a constellation.”[2]