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WHILE every American citizen recognizes the significance of the term “Old Glory” as applied to the national flag, when and where and by whom the nation’s emblem was christened with this endearing and enduring sobriquet is a matter of historic interest less understood.

In the early epoch-making period of the nation’s history William Driver, a lad of twelve years, native of Salem, Mass., begged of his mother permission to go to sea. With her consent he shipped as cabin boy on the sailing vessel China, bound for Leghorn, a voyage of eighteen months.

On this first voyage the courageous spirit of the youth manifested itself in a determination to disprove the words of the ship’s owner, made to him at the beginning of the voyage: “All boys on their first voyage eat more than they earn.”

In appreciation of the mettle shown by the lad, the owner presented him, upon the return from the cruise, with twenty-eight dollars in silver, besides his wages of five dollars per month. He carried the money to his mother, who wisely admonished him to do the very best he could under every circumstance, a charge he never forgot.

His intrepid spirit brought the youthful mariner rapid and deserved promotion. His eighteenth year found him master of a vessel. Those were hazardous days upon the sea, and more than once his ship was subjected to indignity and outrage incident to seafaring of that period. But throughout a long career as master of a merchantman the Stars and Stripes was never lowered from the masthead nor sullied by defeat or by dishonor.

Captain William Driver.

The sailor, of all men, venerates his nation’s flag. To him it is the visible and tangible token of the government he serves, and in it he beholds all the government’s strength and virtue. To William Driver, therefore, the Stars and Stripes typified the glory of the land and of the sea. And seeing his nation’s symbol float dauntless and triumphant above stress of every encounter and happening upon the deep enkindled the inherent love in his heart for it to enthusiastic ardor, and in thought he called the flag “Old Glory.”

A simple incident, but fraught with unread meaning, gave the name into the nation’s keep, albeit its formal christening and national adoption was not to come until the soil beneath its folds should be deep-dyed with the blood of conflict between the land’s own countrymen.

Photo of Original Flag.

“Old Glory.”

In 1831, as master of the brig Charles Daggett, about to set sail for a voyage around the world from Salem, Mass., Captain Driver was presented by the citizens with a large bunting flag in commendation of his services upon the sea and his well-known love for his country’s emblem. This flag, when presented, was rolled in the form of a triangle, and the halyards bent. A young sailor, stepping forward, said: “In ancient times, when an ocean voyage was looked upon with superstitious dread, it was the custom on the eve of departure to roll the banner in form of a triangle. When ready and bent like this, a priest stepped forward and, taking the banner in his hand, sprinkled it with consecrated water and dedicated it to ‘God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,’ turning the point of the triangle upward at the name of each, thus calling on that sacred unity of Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier to bless the national emblem and prosper the voyagers and their friends. The flag thus consecrated was then hoisted to the masthead.”

With glistening eyes the captain watched the hoisting of the flag; and as it fell into position at the masthead of his ship and the colors unfurled to the breeze, he shouted: “I’ll call her Old Glory, boys, Old Glory!”

Cheer after cheer rent the air. The signals of departure were sounded, the cables were cast off, and the good ship set sail for foreign ports.

This was the ninth and most memorable voyage made by Captain Driver. From the island of Tahiti he rescued the suffering descendants of the mutineers of the English ship Bounty, and at risk of grave considerations turned his vessel from her outlined course and returned them to their beautiful and longed-for home, Pitcairn, in the waters of the South Pacific, the settlement of an island, which marks one of the memorable events of English naval history.

Captain Driver made his last voyage around the globe in command of the Black Warrior. At the masthead flew his Salem flag, Old Glory, to which he never referred but by that loving pseudonym.

He left the sea in 1837 to become a resident of Nashville, Tenn. He carried Old Glory with him as a sacred relic, carefully deposited in a heavy, brass-bound, camphorwood sea chest that had accompanied him on all his voyages. On legal holidays, on St. Patrick’s day (which was his own birthday), and on days of especial celebration in the Southern city Old Glory was released from confinement and thrown to the light from some window of the Driver residence or hung on a rope across the street in a triumphal arch under which all processions passed.

At the outbreak of the civil strife Captain Driver avowed his Union sympathies and stood openly for his convictions in the face of business losses, arrest, and threatened banishment.

The Chest in which “Old Glory” Rested.

Just after the secession of the State he daringly flaunted his Old Glory flag from his window; then, fearing its confiscation (which his action had rendered liable), he procured a calico quilt of royal purple hue, and with the aid of two neighboring women sewed it up between the coverings and hid the quilt in his old sea chest.

Again and again the house was searched by Confederate soldiers for this flag, but without success.

Under the purple Old Glory rested. The flag of the Confederacy waved above the Capitol; and Nashville, in pride, prosperity, and splendor, basked in the promise of ultimate victory to the Southland.

But to a rude awakening this fancied security was foredoomed. Suddenly, like the breaking of a terrific thunderclap above the city, came the awesome cry: “Fort Donelson has fallen!”

Fort Donelson fallen meant Nashville’s subjection. Terror-stricken, the people rushed wildly in every direction, and the most ill-founded reports in the excitement gained ready credence. It was announced that General Buell would speedily arrive and open his batteries from across the river, and that gunboats would lay the city in ruins. Some of the citizens urged the burning of the city, that no spoils might be left to the enemy.

The fine suspension bridge across the Cumberland was fired. The commissaries were thrown open, and vast quantities of public stores, amounting to millions of dollars, were distributed among the inhabitants or destroyed. The archives of the State were hurriedly conveyed to Memphis. In the mad desire to escape an impending doom of whose nature they were wholly ignorant, residents vacated their houses and left priceless furnishings a prey to the invading army. On foot, on horseback, by wagon, by any available means that best favored their flight, the crowds surged out of the conquered city.

Notwithstanding the apprehensions of speedy hostilities, it was a week later before General Buell was encamped in Edgefield, opposite the city. To him the mayor formally surrendered Nashville. A proclamation was issued assuring the inhabitants of protection in person and property.

Up the Cumberland steamed fifteen transports and one gunboat—General Nelson’s wing of the Union army. From the levee came the clamor and shouts of men, the rattle of musketry, and din of many feet. The Sixth Ohio was the first regiment to land. Captain Driver was an interested observer of the scene. “Now,” said he, “hath the hour of Old Glory come!”

Lieutenant Thacher, of the Sixth, with a squad of soldiers, left the regiment and escorted Captain Driver to his home, a few blocks distant. They wrested Old Glory from its hiding place and, with the old mariner bearing the flag in his arms, quickly rejoined the regiment.

Up the hill, amidst rattle of drum and sounding trumpets, passed the bluecoats to the Capitol. There a small regimental flag was being hoisted. Suddenly a hush fell upon the waiting victors. The figure of Captain Driver appeared high against the dome of the Statehouse. The strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner” burst upon the ear; and amid cheers and cries of “Old Glory! Old Glory!” that echoed to the distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the top most pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee. And thus Old Glory received her formal christening.

Amid cheers and cries of “Old Glory! Old Glory!” that echoed to the Distant hills the old sea flag unfurled and floated above the topmost pinnacle of the Capitol of Tennessee.

Swarming over the city, bent on various quests, went the victorious Federals. Not so the old sailor. The revered flag, flaunting the colors so joyously above his head once more, was far too weather-beaten, he feared, to withstand long the stiff breeze blowing about the elevated site. Torn to ribbons it must not be, howsoever good the cause.

Quietly he watched and waited about the grounds until after nightfall, when, under cover of the darkness, he again ascended the dome, rescued his beloved old flag, and swung in its place a big merino one that had figured as a campaign flag in 1840, when “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” was the slogan of the Whig Party. He then carried Old Glory to his home and laid it tenderly away in the old sea locker so long dedicated to its use.

Very gradually thereafter the pleasing appellation, Old Glory, made its impress upon the speech of the populace, until, in the later nineties, the “Hoosier Poet” was moved to expression in verse:

Old Glory, the story we’re wanting to hear,

Is what the plain facts of your christening were,

For your name, just to hear it,

Repeat it and cheer it, s’tang to the spirit

As salt as a tear.

And seeing you fly and the boys marching by,

There’s a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye

And an aching to live for you always or die;

And so, by our love for you floating above,

And the scars of all wars and the sorrows thereof,

Who gave you the name of Old Glory?

James Whitcomb Riley.

But to the query the sealed lips of the old seaman answered not. For him had come the higher summons.

Captain Driver’s death occurred in Nashville in 1886. At the head of his grave, in the old City Cemetery, stands a unique monument of his own designing. Upon an old tree trunk, in stone, appears a ship’s anchor and cable. At the top of the anchor is inscribed the beloved pseudonym of his heart’s own coinage, above him here, even in his last sleep: “His ship, his country, and his flag—Old Glory.” About his body when placed within the casket was wrapped a United States flag.

A few years prior to his death Captain Driver placed his Old Glory flag in the hands of his elder daughter, Mrs. Roland, of Wells, Nev., who was then on a visit to him, saying brokenly as he resigned it: “Take this flag and cherish it as I have done. I love it as a mother loves her child. It has been with me, and it has protected me in all parts of the world.”

Worn and faded and tattered, this flag is still in the possession of Mrs. Roland; and in her far Western home it is displayed on patriotic occasions and the story of its naming repeated. Another, presumably the Whig flag herein mentioned, and that, as has been shown, also flew over the Capitol of Tennessee, was sent by Captain Driver, upon request, to the Essex Institute, of Massachusetts. Some confusion has of late arisen in the public mind regarding the identity of the two flags, it having been generally believed that the original Old Glory was the flag in the Massachusetts Institute. This impression is, however, doubtless erroneous.

Notwithstanding a somewhat brusque address and a marked individuality of speech and action, Captain Driver was a man of warm and kindly nature. Although a stanch Unionist, he lent a ready and willing hand to the suffering ones of the South. He married the first time Miss Martha Babbage, of Salem, Mass. For his second wife he espoused a Southern woman, Sarah J. Parks, of Nashville, Tenn. Two of his sons bore arms in the Confederate service. One of these gave his life for the “lost cause.”

It remained for yet another conflict after the civil strife to bring the name Old Glory into general and popular use, for the blended ranks of the Blue and the Gray opposed a common foe. When the North and the South joined hands against a foreign power and floated the Stars and Stripes above the emblem of Spain upon the island of Cuba, the flag of the Union became Old Glory to every man of the nation.