("Buy War Bonds" (Uncle Sam) circulated 1941-1945, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
(Portrait of Samuel Wilson, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
Samuel Wilson was born in 1766 within the modern region of Arlington, Massachusetts. At the time, the American colonies were at war with the British Empire. In 1781, a fifteen-year-old Samuel Wilson joined the Revolutionary Army for the last few years of the war, though he likely did not see any combat. He was given the position of a military cattle guard, and also served as a butcher and meatpacker for the American forces. After the United States secured its independence with the close of the war in 1783, Samuel Wilson returned home and began cultivating a family business with his brother.
The Wilsons invested their money into more than one field of commerce. Initially, they thrived in brickmaking, but Samuel Wilson also diverted his profits into building a meatpacking industry in Troy, New York. Wilson’s meatpacking business obtained a lofty deal when the War of 1812 broke out—the United States contracted with Samuel for around 5,000 barrels of beef and pork to be shipped to American forces.
("The lightning speed of honesty," an Uncle Sam cartoon by Thomas Nast (1840–1902), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
(Uncle Sam poster c. 1917 by Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons)
Unfortunately, Uncle Sam Wilson did not live to see his name bloom into an unforgettable national image. He died in 1854, at the age of eighty-eight, before Thomas Nast had popularized the basic features of the Uncle Sam character. Samuel Wilson was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, in his adopted home of Troy, New York. The United States government formally recognized Wilson as the inspiration behind the famous image of Uncle Sam in 1961.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
- https://priceonomics.com/uncle-sam-was-a-real-dude/
- http://anb.org/articles/20/20-01883-print.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/us/plenty-will-claim-to-be-uncle-sam-but-a-few-can-prove-the-lineage.html
- http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-nicknamed-uncle-sam
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