"Old Glory" was originally the name of a specific American flag that was hand sewn in the 1824. A young sea captain by the name of William Driver was presented with an 11 ft by 17 ft American flag heavily constructed for flying at sea by his mother and other ladies of his native Salem, Massachusetts. The flag had 24 stars.
Captain Driver was very pleased with his flag, and he flew it on every voyage at sea. Legend has that when hoisting the flag on the Charles Doggett in 1831 while setting sail for a worldwide trip, he first called it "Old Glory," as he felt it was the most glorious flag he'd ever seen.
The Captain retired from the sea in 1837 and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, taking his precious flag with him. On every appropriate occasion, Captain Driver displayed Old Glory from a rope pulled from his front porch across the street. The townspeople became very familiar with Captain Driver's Old Glory. Captain Driver, himself, had become a familiar sight on the streets of Nashville, bald, wearing sailor pants and an old pea jacket.
By 1861, the flag was a bit older, a bit more fragile, but still cared for. It had been modified to show the appropriate 34 stars and donned a white anchor in the bottom right hand corner of the blue canton - Driver's personal signature in rememberance of his years at sea.
That year, Tennessee seceded from the Union and Civil War broke out. While Driver remained loyal to the Union, he feared his flag, a conspicuous and locally well-known symbol of the Union, would be destroyed. He had some neighbor girls sew his flag into the middle of a comforter so not even his family knew of its whereabouts. Whether Confederate forces actually searched for the flag or not, the fact remains that Captain Driver's precious flag survived the Civil War in the capital city of a southern State.
On February 25, 1862, Union forces marched victoriously into Nashville. When Captain Driver approached the Union forces and offered them a fitting banner for the Tennessee Capitol flagpole, he was offered an armed escort to go and retrieve it. He entered his home, ripped open a faded quilt, and produced the flag he loved so dearly. Then he, a man almost 60 years of age, climbed the dome and raised Old Glory on the state capitol spire. It would be the last time Old Glory ever flew from a flagpole.
Cheers of "Old Glory" filled the air from the citizens and soldiers on hand to witness the event. The men of the Sixth Ohio Regiment, moved by Captain Driver's devotion to his American flag, adopted the name "Old Glory" as their motto.
News of the spectacle spread across the North and Old Glory bequeathed its name to American flags everywhere.
Before Captain Driver died in 1886, he gave the flag to one of his daughters, telling her "to cherish it as I have cherished it, for it has been my friend and protector around the world."
Today, Captain William Driver's beloved Old Glory is carefully preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, a fitting companion for other historical and priceless memories of our great nation.