Talk:Brandywine flag

The stamp image vs. the article image

The last paragraph of the article says

The Brandywine Flag is currently displayed in Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park[3], and was featured on a 33¢ postage stamp issued in 2000, as a part of the US Postal Service's Stars and Stripes series. The colors and pattern on the stamp may have been altered for aesthetic purposes.

I looked for data on the actual original flag. Here's what I've come up with, based on the images listed and sourced below.

• Color: All the images are red and white, but the shade of red varies:

  "The beauty of the stamp pane is based on the diversity of the designs combined with the theme of red, white and blue. In order to achieve visual continuity, the red and blue colors were standardized." -- Commemorative Stamps (U.S.), from CRW Flags' page (image #2 below). This seems to be a quote from the official description of the pane at the time of issue.

• Pattern: All the images agree with Bay's description: "The flag is bearing a stars and stripes canton, 7 white stripes and a white canton bearing 13 red eight-pointed stars in rows of 4-5-4." But the stars are arranged in the rows in two different ways:
  1. staggered in an alternating layout, with the stars in the top and bottom rows of four being horizontally halfway between the stars in the middle row of five: #2 (stamp), #3 (museum repro), #5 (Sons of the Revolution), #6 (Rita Bay)
  2. "justified", with the rows of four having wider spacing to fill out the same width as the row of five: #1 (WP), #4 (Downingtown)

Here is an approximation of the layouts in ASCII art, not trying to keep the two examples at the same width:

  * * * *          *   *   *   *
 * * * * *         *  *  *  *  *
  * * * *          *   *   *   *
 STAGGERED           JUSTIFIED

So, what was the original pattern of the stars? I can't tell from these data, but I suspect that the justified pattern was original:

• It seems more naïve than the staggered pattern: more in line with what I'd expect from a Colonial soldier rather than a contemporary graphics designer.
• The two justified arrangements are not identical. The WP graphic, which is neat and regular, was made by a Wiki volunteer as part of his project of flags. But the Downingtown image, a photo of an actual flag, presumably the replica donated by Brandywine Flags, looks very amateurish and, well, sloppy: just what I'd expect of a flag put together by someone who wasn't much used to sewing and/or didn't have the standards resulting from two centuries of mass production, mechanization, and computerization.

(Since this is such a long discussion post, longer than the article itself, I'm going to sign here before the subsection header, and again at the bottom.) --Thnidu (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

image references

To avoid any copyright questions I have not included the images, but just provided their URLs and description of the source.

1. Wikipedia: File:Brandywine_Flag.svg. Created by User:DevinCook
2. U.S. Postal Service : http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/u/us_stmp2.jpg

   I haven't been able to find an image of the stamp on the USPS site. This one is on a page of the company website of CRW Flags. Commemorative Stamps (U.S.)

3. Brandywine Battlefield Museum Shop: http://www.brandywinebattlefield.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Brandywine_flag.226133856_std.jpg

   on the webpage of the Brandywine Battlefield Museum Shop: "Heavy duty outdoor dyed nylon & will not run, peel, or fade. Each year, during the week of September 11th the residents of the Brandywine Valley, and those sympathetic to saving Brandywine Battlefield, fly these flags with Pride & Patriotism! In honor of the events of September 11th 1777. The original red silk, Division Flag of the 7th PA Regt. is currently in the collection at Independence National Historic Park." [I haven't been able to find anything about it on the park's website.

4. Downingtown (PA) "Battle of the Brandywine" football tradition: http://www.downingtownalumni.org/images/botbflag.jpg

   website of the Downingtown Area High School Alumni Association about a local traditional football game called the Battle of the Brandywine. This image may be of a replica donated by Brandywine Flags. The flag does not appear, however, on that company's Historical Flags page.

5. Sons of the Revolution: http://www.vssr.org/images/flags/7th_PA_small.jpg

   Sons of the Revolution Flag Collection 31-40. "37. Division Colours of the Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment of 1776 - (Also known as the Brandywine Flag). The original is at Independence National Historic Park, in Philadelphia. The Flag was carried at the September 11, 1777 Battle of Brandywine, in a Company that was part of the Seventh Pennsylvania."

6. Rita Bay: http://ritabay.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/flag-12-brandywine.jpg

   blog of an author named Rita Bay, who seems to have been posting a series on flags at the time. She does not credit the source of her image.

--Thnidu (talk) 02:36, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don't remember quite exactly where I found the image I used to create the SVG image - but it was a NAVA article or museum source. I found the following link that (claims) to be a NAVA article about the Brandywine Flag. http://www.vexman.net/13stars/ -DevinCook (talk) 17:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Brandywine Flag

Most of the information concerning the Brandywine Flag is incorrect, in that it was actually connected to the Chester County, Pennsylvania Militia. This was established in 1984 and published in 1999, too late to be included in Richardson's Revolutionary Flags book. As Chairman of the East Nottingham Township Historical Commission I have verified and extended the research from the 1999 article. The flag in no longer available to the general public and Indeoendence National Historical Park now accepts the ties to the Chester County Militia. The 7th PA Robert Wilson is not the same person as the Robert Wilson of East Nottingham Township to whom the flag's origins have been traced. All of the current research will be published sometime in 2014. <ref>Published Pennsylvania Archives and Chester County Archives<ref> Elsquared (talk) 23:19, 20 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chesco1777 (talk • contribs) 22:02, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

flag NOT on display

This would classify as "original research", so I can't put it in the article, so I'll put it here. I contacted the NPS about the flag and this is their reply: "The Brandywine flag hasn't been in Independence Hall since before WWII. The National Park Service did exhibit the flag in our Army-Navy Museum from the 1970s into the early 1990s. The flag was permanently removed from exhibit in 1996 and hasn't been exhibited since because it is indeed extremely fragile. We had the flag stabilized by a textile conservator who designed a special housing for the flag to lie flat. The flag is now stored in Independence National Historical Park's secure, climate-controlled museum collection vault." Elsquared (talk) 23:19, 20 September 2019 (UTC)