The Oldest Flag

The Bedford Flag is made of crimson silk. It is painted, not embroidered, with an armored arm holding a sword emerging from clouds — a traditional European heraldic device. The motto reads Vince aut Morire: Conquer or Die. The flag dates to approximately 1737; it predates the Revolution by nearly forty years. It was a militia company flag before it was an American one. After April 19, 1775, the Nathaniel Page family kept it for generations, folded in a trunk, before donating it to the Bedford Public Library in 1885. It now lives in a climate-controlled case in the Bedford Museum. It is the oldest surviving flag associated with an American military unit — older than the country it outlasted.