I’ve been communicating with Margaret R. from Washington, North Carolina, about an interesting old Gadsden flag she found in an antique store. We’ve been trying to estimate how old it is. Here’s an image:
How old is this Gadsden flag?
And here’s a close-up:
Note the material and lettering
The material certainly looks old to me, but the fact that the letters are printed and not sewn indicates to me that the flag probably isn’t pre-20th century.
But I’m no expert. Any experts out there?
Although it’s not Revolutionary-era, I find this intriguing. The Gadsden was not very common before the 1970s, when it enjoyed a bit of a revival. If this is pre-1970s, who was using it and when?
I’m also interested in the representation of the snake. This is slightly different than what we traditionally see. There is no grass beneath it and the snake is drawn a bit differently.
Tags: antique flag, old Gadsden flags
Also the snake’s rattle does not have 13 parts to it as in other representations of the flag.
This was before my time but I believe there were jeeping/off-roading clubs during the 1970’s in California that would sport the Gadsden snake and text. Back then, a lot of clubs were threatened by anti-off-roading laws, so they would go all hippie-activist until the gas shortage.
Thanks for that comment, Anthony. The woman who asked about this is in North Carolina. I know there is a lot of dune-buggy riding in the Outer Banks so maybe there is a connection here.
The font is a san serif font. The one on Wikipedia is a serif font. If you go to the wikimedia page the flag is on, a comment is that original flags used a serif font.