Bear Flags
Several Bear Flags were donated to the Society during the last half of the 19th century, including a flag which almost certainly was the Bear Flag which was lowered at Sonoma on July 9, 1846, when the U.S. Flag was first raised at that location. This same Bear Flag very well may be the original Bear Flag which was made at the beginning of the Bear Flag Revolt of June/July 1846. The donation records of the Society show that two Bear Flags were donated to the Society by California U. S. Senator Weller on September 8, 1855. For many years, the Society would carry the Bear Flag during Admission Day parades and also on Anniversaries of the Bear Flag Revolt. Unfortunately all of the Bear flags held by the Society were destroyed in April 1906 as a result of the earthquake and fires which destroyed the Society's Pioneer Hall. Luckily a few photographs of the flags which had been taken survived so that we know what the flags actually looked like. Also a duplicate of the Bear Flag was made in 1896, the 50th Anniversary of the Bear Flag Revolt, and this flag continues to be displayed at the Sonoma Barracks, in Sonoma, California.
Read more about this topic: Society Of California Pioneers
Famous quotes containing the words bear and/or flags:
“Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes. No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies’ eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The flags are natures newly found.
Rifles grow sharper on the sight.
There is a rumble of autumnal marching,
From which no soft sleeve relieves us.
Fate is the present desperado.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)