On April 19th, 1775, young Sam Wilson was wakened by the sounds of marching feet. Pushing back his curtain, he could see the column of British regulars progressing up the main road not a hundred yards from his house. Rushing to his father's room, he pulled at the quilt to arouse the sleeping brickmaker. "Father, the British regulars are on the road to Lexington. I fear there may be trouble up the road. Should we stay or flee?"
The rest of that fateful day was seared into the young man's memory as first a band of older men from town ambushed British resupply convoy and, tragically, later as a retreating group of angry soldiers shot up the Jason Russell house a quarter mile up the road, inflicting the greatest number of casulties during the day. He knew those men, and it was with a heavy heart he and his family left Arlington the next year as the war began to close in on them.
It was nearly fifteen years later that Sam and his brother Ebenezer walked from their New Hampshire farmhouse to Troy, New York, where they set up a brick works. It was successful for a short while, but eventually failed. The enterprising brothers now founded a commercial slaughterhouse that became a vital and growing business. The two were known around town as "Uncle Eb" and "Uncle Sam" and in fact they did have many local nephews and nieces.
When the War of 1812 broke out, it was clear that the federal troops would have to be supplied a decent ration of beef and pork, and local agent Ezra Adams knew just were to go. Soon huge casks of salted meat were being trucked down to the wharf, each stamped with the letters EA/US.
As passers by asked what was in the barrels and the meaning of the markings, the drivers would joke "Ezra Adams came to Uncle Sam to feed the army!" and everyone had a good laugh. In fact Sam Wilson's business was well enough known up and down the Hudson River that by 1814 a book had appeared based on the event, and how the Troy meatpacker was assuring all that he really didn't autograph every cask.
This, then, was the first appearance of Uncle Sam as the emponymous representative of the American people. Later
, famed political cartoonist Thomas Nast re-formed the figure by morphing it with Abraham Lincoln, adding the beard and the lanky frame. Others contributed the costume and the Uncle Sam that we know and love began to take shape. Finally, James Mongotmery Flagg's immortal WW1 recruiting poster added the finishing touches to a presence which ever since has been recognized throughout the world.
This spring, the Town of Arlington, Massachusetts has empowered the Uncle Sam Committee to start work on the bicentennial of one of its most famous native sons. Sam Wilson, who witnessed the start of the American Revolution was born in 1763, but the Uncle Sam we know appeared in 1812. It is for this reason that the Committtee has chosen 2012 as the National Uncle Sam Bicentennial and is starting preparations for the celebration of his 200th birthday as the symbol of the United States.
