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The Dodson Flag (Retired) LbNA #28932 (ARCHIVED)

Owner:Lone Star Quilter
Plant date:Feb 24, 2007
Location:
City:Washington
County:Washington
State:Texas
Boxes:1
Found by: Silver Eagle
Last found:Mar 4, 2007
Status:FFFFFFa
Last edited:Feb 24, 2007
**This box has been CONFIRMED MISSING. It has been replaced and relocated within the park and renamed "The Dodson Flag 2"**

The first Constitutional Convention met at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1, 1836. Most of the delegates were under 40 years old, and all had been elected for the express purpose of declaring the independence of Texas from Mexico and forming a government for the new republic. No one knew when they all might have to leave to fight the advancing Mexican army. On the opening day a “Norther” blew through and the temperature inside the meeting hall, a wooden building with scraps of cloth for windows and doors, was 33 degrees. Flying over the hall was the flag designed and made by Sarah Rudolph Bradley Dodson.
Recognized as the first “Lone Star” flag, she originally created it for her husband Archelaus, a member of the Robinson company of army volunteers formed in September, 1835, at Harrisburg, Texas. After serving at Gonzales, this company marched under the Dodson flag to San Antonio to lay siege to the Alamo.
There is some disagreement about the placement of the star on the Dodson flag. In 1896, Mr. Dodson, who was living in Nueces County, told an historian that the flag was made up of three squares of red, white and blue with the white star in the field of blue next to the staff. However, Guy Bryan, in a speech before the Texas Veterans Association I 1873, stated, “The first Lone Star flag that I can find account of was made at Harrisburg….The Lone Star was white, five-pointed, and set in a ground of red.” We tend to believe Mr. Dodson, so have presented it as having the star in the field of blue. Historian John Henry Brown states that this banner was one of two flags flown at the Texas Independence Convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos beginning 1 March 1836 before the fall of the Alamo. This flag, employing red, white and blue vertical stripes with the single star is the earliest flag most similar in color and number of stripes to the Lone Star flag of today while retaining the broad vertical stripes similar to the motif of the Mexican tri-color.

Directions:
This letterbox is located in Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site. Take Highway 105 west from Navasota for 7 miles. Turn left on FM 115 to the park.

To the Box:
See clues for "The Dodson Flag 2"