Obscure Local History #1: The First Flag in Saint Paul c. 1842

[From whence Saint Paul got its name...]

I've been reading through J Fletcher William's 1875 book, A History of the City of Saint Paul, which has aged better than I initially thought. It's a colorful and rather encyclopedic accounting of the stories of the city's first settlers and notables, and if you look past the glaring anti-indigenous racism, is worth some time.

For example, I came across this anecdote which claims to be the story of the city's first American flag. It's from the section on Sergeant Richard W. Mortimer, an Englishman who arrived at Fort Snelling in 1835, retired from the army a few years later, and moved to Saint Paul in 1842:

Sergeant MORTIMER was really uniftted for the new life in which he had engaged... He was a liberal and public-spirited man, and, had he lived, would have been a prominent citizen. The first flag every [sic] raised in Saint Paul, was procured by him, at the expense of $35. He had one of his men raise it on a pole, in front of his house, on Christmas, 1842. There seems to have been almost as much rivalry between upper and lower town, those days, as there was subsequently, for the flag had been flying but a little while, when some wicked scamp, from the lower part of the village, cut it down. MORTIMER was terribly enraged when he found it out, and was about to put it in force Gov. DIX's famous order -- "if any man hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." He went to load a gun, and ordered his horse to purse the offender. His wife, fearing there would be bloodshed, unloosed the horse, and there was so much delay before he was caught, that MORTIMER's anger cooled down.

According to a very ambitious inflation calculator, $35 in 1842 is about $1,000 in today's dollars. Meanwhile, you can get a Saint Paul flag right now for only $15.