A Rare Flag Oddity

The second flag pictured below is a rare unofficial Forty-seven Star Flag that was converted into an unofficial variant Forty-eight Star flag.  The flag maker produced the flag believing that either Arizona or New Mexico would enter the Union alone which would have created an official Forty-seven Star flag.  Instead, both states entered the Union in the same year.  The stars in the canton of U.S. flags increased from forty-six to forty-eight without an intervening Forty-seven Star Flag.

Union showing added forty-eighth star in lower left hand corner.

Union showing the original forty-seven stars without added star.

The manufacturer apparently also believed that the pattern for Forty-seven and perhaps an even later Forty-eight star flags would follow a staggered pattern of stars as seen on the forty-five and forty-six star flags.  Perhaps the maker intended a flag that could be updated when the forty-eighth state would eventually enter the Union.  If this was indeed the logic, the manufacturer was wrong on all counts.

Detail showing added crudely sewn forty-eighth star on the left.

A crudely appliquéd Forty-eighth star was added, but the pattern of stars was still incorrect making the flag a double oddity.  There are few Forty-seven star flags in existence.  This is perhaps the only Forty-seven—Forty-eight star flag.

While this flag’s design has never been official, it gives us insight into how the United States flag has evolved as new states joined the Union.  If a fifty-first state joins the Union in the future, we can expect that flags will be made anticipating a new pattern of stars.  Flag makers that guess wrongly will have unofficial variants that may one day be rare considered flag oddities.