Schenectady Liberty

American colonists had been hoisting flags bearing the word “Liberty” since the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765. This is the only original “Liberty” flag from the rising American Revolution known to survive.   

In the 1760s and early 1770s, American colonists maintained their allegiance to King George III while protesting his ministers’ colonial policies. They hoped to restore their rights and liberties as Americans within the British Empire. A 1775 newspaper reporting on a protest in New York City recorded the use of flags with political messaging:  

A union flag with a red field was hoisted on the liberty-pole, where at nine o'clock the friends of freedom assembled…They were attended by music, and two standard-bearers carrying a large union flag, with a blue field, on which were the following inscriptions: On one side, George III. Rex, and the Liberties of America; No Popery. On the other, The Union of the Colonies, and the Measures of the Congress.  

By 1776, Liberty flags no longer only symbolized resistance. They helped call for revolution and American independence. This flag is believed to have been carried by a New York Continental Army or militia regiment in 1776 and 1777. In August 1776, after the fall of New York City and the defeat of the Continental Army in Manhattan, a high-ranking commander of German troops in British service, reported that “we came into possession of eleven enemy flags with the motto ‘Liberty.’”   

Revolutionary War veteran Nicholas Veeder of Schenectady, New York, owned this flag following the war. He carried it in early Independence Day parades and preserved it as part of his collection of Revolutionary War mementos.