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Old Glory

Captain William Driver (1803-1886), a shipmaster out of Salem, Massachusetts, is famed for naming the American flag “Old Glory.” 

Driver was apprenticed as a cabin boy at the age of 14. In the coming years he sailed to Italy, India, Gibralter, Sweden and Belgium. Driver was an apt student of the sea and at the age of 21 was made master of the 110-ton Charles Doggett. 

On March 17, 1824, his mother and several young women in Salem sewed him a large 24-star flag and gave it to him as a birthday gift. (The dimensions of the flag were 12 by 24 feet.) Driver had the flag hoisted on the Charles Doggett. At the ceremony, when asked what he thought about it, he said, “God bless you, I’ll call it ‘Old Glory.’” 

Captain Driver is nearly as famous for his longest trip, which he made in 1831 to the Pacific in the Charles Doggett. When the ship landed at Tahiti, he met some of the descendants of H.M.S. Bounty crew. These people had left Pitcairn Island, where their ancestors had been marooned by the famous mutineers who had taken charge of the Bounty. The descendants were not happy on Tahiti and asked Driver if he would transport them back to Pitcairn Island. 

In 1837 Driver retired from the sea and settled in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1860,  Tennessee seceded from the Union at the outset of the Civil War. Confederates were intent on finding the now famous flag and destroying it. As a prominent symbol of the Union, its destruction would have been a deep blow to the North and a morale boost for the South. Driver’s wife and daughter hid the flag in a bed comforter, and it was not found despite several searches. 

In February 1862 an Ohio Regiment entered Nashville and followed Driver home, where he ripped open the comforter to reveal the revered banner. He then took the flag to the state capitol, where he raised it on the capitol flagpole. □