Yesterday I witnessed a flag-folding ceremony at a Veteran's Day assembly at my new school. I've been trying to find out from when and whence this thing comes. Some historical background with citation to sources. Here's what I'm talking about. This would be a military history search, and I've been looking, but am stumped, so... thought about RadRef as a source of help. I particularly want to know the age of the "meaning" of the 13 folds. Mucho gracias!
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Flag Folding History - sent email 11/11/04
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:03:53 -0500
From: Jim Miller
To:------
Subject: History of the symbols of 13 Flag Folds
Librarians' Index to the Internet, http://lii.org , gets 3 hits for the search < flag folding >,
but they seem to merely repeat the flag-folding custom, not describe where it came from.
A broader search, < flag > gets 69 hits. On the first page of these, the Betsy Ross Homepage at http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/ has a link under "Other Questions" to "Flag-Folding Ceremony" at http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/more/folds.htm
This appears to be an elusive history, because the Betsy Ross site links to a number of places that dispute the meanings given in many sites that talk about the 13 folds and what each one stands for. One link is www.snopes.com at http://www.snopes.com/military/flagfold.htm .
It says, in part: "The American flag isn't folded in this manner because the thirteen folds correspond to the original thirteen states, or because the folding produces a shape resembling a cocked hat, or because each of the folds has a special symbolic meaning. The flag is folded this way simply because it provides a dignified ceremonial touch that distinguishes folding a flag from folding an ordinary object such as a bedsheet, and because it results a visually pleasing, easy-to-handle shape. That this process requires thirteen folds is coincidental, not the product of design."
It gives 2 sources for this discussion:
Corcoran, Michael. For Which It Stands: An Anecdotal History of the American Flag.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. ISBN 0-743-23617-3. Worldcat (OCLC: 50269956) shows 382 holdings in the US, more of them at public libraries, but also at quite a number of college and university libraries
Singleton, David. Honor Our Flag: How to Care For, Fly and Otherwise Respect the Stars and Stripes. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2001. ISBN 0-762-72368-8. Worldcat (OCLC: 48682441) shows 64 libraries in US - all but a few of them public libraries.
These seem to be available from bookstores and online, but with that many OCLC locations they should be readily available on Interlibrary Loan, if your own library does not have them.
As to when and where the tradition of these 13 symbols came in - that might take some fairly long research. Your first step might be these 2 books, especially the Corcoran which has a bibliography on p. 183, and about a 6 page index. Next might be to browse the area around call number 929.92... in most public libraries (the Corcoran one may be in 929.9/2/0973 , to give you other possible places to look). If you use academic or very large public libraries, the Library of Congress call no. is around CR113. For example, here at the University of Maryland we have maybe 2 dozen books in the CR113 area. If it's as convenient to use either, I would try the public libraries first.
I did try searches like < flag and fold* > in databases like America History and Life, Jstor, Periodical contents index, and even Digital Dissertations, because this seemed like a possible topic for American Studies or social psychology, etc. But I got no leads at all in these, even though Jstor and PCI go back as far as the late 19th century for some magazines and journals.
No luck either, trying Lexis Congressional in the old 1789-1973 historical indexes, with searches like < flag and fold* > or < flag and protocol* >. Even the very broad search < flag > seems to not get closer than documents like
"To Provide for the Giving of Flags to Widows and Children of Deceased Members of Congress" CIS-NO: 77 HLib-T.16 SOURCE: House Committee on Library DOC-TYPE: House Unpublished Hearings Collection DATE: June 10, 1942 LENGTH: 1 p. Addenda CONG-SESS: 77-2 SESSION-DATE: 1942 CONGRESS: 77
or
"To Adopt an Official Flag Code of the U.S."CIS-NO: H498-9 SOURCE: House Committee on Judiciary DOC-TYPE: Published Hearing DATE: Jan. 25, 1928 LENGTH: ii+34 p. CONG-SESS: 70-1 SESSION-DATE: 1927, 1928 CIS-HEARINGS-MICROFICHE-GROUP: 1A SUDOC: Y4.J89/1:F59/6 CONGRESS: 70
Google.com searches like < "flag folding" history site:edu > or < "flag folding tradition" > seem to get more of what you already have found - lots of "how to" and "what it signifies", but no word about who first thought of the tradition. MY guess is that it IS out there, in old magazine or news accounts, but is not recent enough to be in any of the currently available searchable databases. I believe it would probably be faster to try to get it out of books in those 929.92... / CR113... call numbers, in hopes that some history buff has been down this hard road before.
Very good question! Please let me know how these ideas for searching it work out.
Thanks,
Jim
------
Jim Miller
Senior Reference Librarian and
College Park PTDL Representative
Engineering & Physical Sciences Library
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742-7011
tel 301-405-9152
fax 301-405-9164
jmiller2@umd.edu