US States

Several European expeditions, including a group of Spanish Jesuits, explored the Chesapeake Bay during the 16th century. In 1583, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted Walter Raleigh a charter to plant a colony north of Spanish Florida. In 1584, Raleigh sent an expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America. The name “Virginia” may have been suggested then by Raleigh or Elizabeth, perhaps noting her status as the “Virgin Queen.” Initially the name applied to the entire coastal region from South Carolina to Maine, plus the island of Bermuda. Later, subsequent royal charters modified the Colony’s boundaries. The London Company was incorporated as a joint stock company by the proprietary Charter of 1606, which granted land rights to this area. The company financed the first permanent English settlement in the “New World”, Jamestown. Named for King James I, it was founded in May 1607. With the bankruptcy of the London Company in 1624, the settlement was taken into royal authority as an English crown colony.

New Hampshire was one of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule during the American Revolution.  By the time of the American Revolution, New Hampshire was a divided province. The economic and social life of the Seacoast region revolved around sawmills, shipyards, merchants’ warehouses, and established village and town centers. Wealthy merchants built substantial homes, furnished them with the finest luxuries, and invested their capital in trade and land speculation. At the other end of the social scale, there developed a permanent class of day laborers, mariners, indentured servants and even slaves.

In 1775, Colonel William Moultrie was asked by the Revolutionary Council of Safety to design a flag for the South Carolina troops to use during the American Revolutionary War. Moultrie’s design had the blue of the militia’s uniforms and the crescent, a symbol which also appeared on the militia’s uniforms. It was first flown at Fort Johnson. This flag was flown in the defense of a new fortress on Sullivan’s Island, when Moultrie faced off against a British fleet. Soon popularly known as either the Liberty Flag or Moultrie Flag, it became the standard of the South Carolinian militia, and was presented in Charleston, by Major General Nathanael Greene, when that city was liberated at the end of the war.
The palmetto was added in 1861, also a reference to Moultrie’s defense of Sullivan’s Island; the fortress he’d constructed had survived largely because the palmettos, laid over sand walls, were able to withstand British cannon.