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 Historians aren't sure how the character "Uncle Sam" was
created, or who (if anyone) he was named after. The main theory is that Uncle
Sam was named after Samuel Wilson.
Samuel Wilson was
born in Arlington, Mass., on September 13, 1766. His boyhood home was in Mason, New Hampshire. In 1789, he and his
brother Ebenezer walked to Troy, New York.
During the War of
1814, Wilson worked in a factory packing meat. He provided
large shipments of meat to the US Army, in barrels that were stamped with the
initials "U.S." Supposedly, someone
who saw the "U.S." stamp said --
perhaps as a joke -- that the initials stood for "Uncle Sam" Wilson. The idea that the meat
shipments came from "Uncle Sam" led to the thought that Uncle Sam
stood for the federal government.
Samuel Wilson
died in 1854. His grave
is in the Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, New York.
Uncle Sam,
usually seen with a white goatee and star-spangled suit, is an invention of
artists and political cartoonists; Samuel Wilson did not look like the modern
image of Uncle Sam. For example, Wilson was clean-shaven, while
Uncle Sam is usually shown with a goatee.
The single most
famous portrait of Uncle Sam is the "I WANT YOU" Army recruiting
poster from World War I. The poster was painted by James Montgomery Flagg in
1916-1917.
Many early
examples of Uncle Sam cartoons can be found in The Foremost Guide to Uncle
Sam Collectibles, by Gerald E. Czulewicz (Collector Books, 1995).
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