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Hazards of the Rocky Shores | A City of Homes | Hopkins Seaside Laboratory
Mammoth Stables & Horses | Hotel to Holman's | Lovers Point
RLS' Old Pacific Capital Quote | Pacific Grove People
The First Pledge of Allegiance | Pacific Grove on Track | C.K. Tuttle

Close-up of front porch area of Public School on Pine Avenue. Columns are wrapped in bunting,
with 1492 at right, 1892 at left. From back of original print in Museum collection 6/133: "Presentation
to new schoolhouse of flag by GAR. Flag being raised by Mr. Patrick. Mr. Gretter, principal, standing
bare-headed with manuscript in hand. Hat off: city clerk (up to 1908) Mr. Patrick J A Bonney--with Union
cap, Ely Fisher chaplain of GAR (long beard and whiskers behind lanyards)." 400th anniversary of
Columbus discovering America celebration, with flag-raising and Pledge of Allegiance. Crowd raises right
hands in salute, which was not replaced with the hands-over-heart gesture until WWII.
October 12, 1892. #17.2-559-PB, from the Museum's Tuttle Collection.

The original Pledge of Allegiance, or flag
salute, as written by Francis Bellamy for
The Youth's Companion, in September 1892.
* "to" added in October 1892.

The 1923-24 revised Pledge. During those years, the phrase "my flag" was changed to "the flag of the United States of America" by the National Flag Conference. The conference, under the leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, made the changes to eliminate potential ambiguity that might lead immigrants to pledge to the flag of their original homeland.

The Youth's Companion, a popular magazine which, during its heyday in the late 1890s had the largest weekly circulation in America (and has been likened to the Readers' Digest for the scope of its articles), appealed to adults and youth alike.

Jack London was first published in its pages, and authors including William James, Willa Cather, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Lincoln Steffens, Winston Churchill, Thomas Huxley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Emily Dickinson were published there.

The magazine pioneered many advertising and promotional campaigns, including premiums department head James Bailey Upham's crusade to place flags in schools. Upham also used the magazine to launch the Lyceum League of America, a Chautauqua-like educational and social organization.

The magazine's editor and publisher, Daniel S. Ford, craved privacy, and called his publishing company the Perry Mason Company. Years later, one-time reader Erle Stanley Gardner named his mystery hero after the company.

In its September 8, 1892 issue, The Youth's Companion published a short salute to the flag that staff writer Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931) penned in August 1892.

Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian socialist, was first cousin to Edward Bellamy, a novelist famous for social utopian works including Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897).

Bellamy's creed was intended to be recited at the groundbreaking ceremony on Columbus Day, 1892, to prepare for the World's Columbian Fair in Chicago. Due to building delays, this ceremony didn't take place as planned, but a nationwide celebration managed by Upham and the magazine went forward. The Companion's four-page official program included poems and instructions on how to observe Columbus Day.

From its inception in 1892 until an act of Congress in 1942, the Pledge was accompanied by a gesture reminiscent of the classical Roman salute ("right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it"). During World War II, the gesture was deemed inappropriate, and changed to the right-hand-over-the-heart gesture we still use today.