It is one of the most iconic and enduring images in American history: a hollow-cheeked, white-haired figure with bushy eyebrows and a pointy goatee dressed in a tophat and tails emblazoned with the stars and stripes, pointing sternly at the viewer and declaring I WANT YOU FOR THE U.S. ARMY. This, of course, is Uncle Sam, the flamboyantly-dressed personification of the United States government. Whenever the nation has need of her people, you can be sure this flag-bedecked figure will be there to unite them in patriotic fervour. But where did Uncle Sam come from, and was he ever a real person? Well, pull on your striped pants and star-spangled top hat as we dive into the fascinating history of this All-American icon.

Despite his ubiquity today, Uncle Sam was far from the first personification of America. When Europeans first began to colonize the continent in the 16th Century, the preferred symbol of the exotic and untamed New World was the “Indian Queen”: a nude and voluptuous Native American woman astride a giant armadillo and brandishing a tomahawk. Over the next two centuries this figure slowly evolved – first into the tamer and more feminine “Indian Princess” and then into the neoclassically-inspired figure of Columbia. Named after Christopher Columbus, Columbia was in keeping with the other female personifications of nations at the time, such as Britannia for England, Caledonia for Scotland, Hibernia for Ireland, Marianne for France, and Italia Turrita for Italy. Many of these figures were, in turn, inspired by Minerva and Libertas – the Ancient Roman goddesses of wisdom and liberty. Many early depictions of Columbia show her in a classical toga and high-laced sandals, and either wearing or carrying a Phrygian Cap or pileus– a pointed cap with a turned-down peak given to freed slaves in the Roman Republic and a popular symbol of liberty. Other common accessories included a shield of the United States, a sword, a laurel wreath, a bust of George Washington, and a bald eagle. However, Columbia’s appearance was never really finalized, with later depictions showing her sporting a dress bedecked with the stars and stripes or even just the popular fashion of the period she was drawn. And while she managed to remain a popular symbol of America alongside Uncle Sam for more than a century, her popularity rapidly declined after 1924 when she was chosen as the logo of American film studio Columbia Pictures. Thereafter, the preferred female personification of the United States became Lady Liberty, made famous by the colossal statue in New York harbour gifted to the nation by France in 1886.

A more direct foreign counterpart to Uncle Sam, however, was John Bull, a male personification of England traditionally depicted as a portly country yeoman wearing a top hat, frock coat, and waistcoat – the latter often emblazoned with the Union Flag. Created in 1712 by John Arbuthnot, a close friend of British satirists Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, John Bull was originally a satirical character meant to poke fun at the British Whig Party but quickly evolved into a patriotic symbol of the practical and good-natured British everyman. Alongside France’s Marianne and decidedly less allegorical figures like Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, he would remain a popular stock character for political cartoonists until the end of the Second World War.

But the most direct ancestor of the Uncle Sam we know and love today was the now largely-forgotten character of Brother Jonathan. Dating from the Revolutionary War period, Brother Jonathan represented the stereotypical New England Yankee: brash, unsophisticated, and boorish but sly, independent, and scrappy. In this sense he had much in common with another popular allegorical figure of the time: Yankee Doodle, made famous by the classic patriotic song, more on this and why Yankee Doodle called the feather in his hat Macaroni in the Bonus Facts in a bit.

Like Yankee Doodle, Brother Jonathan started out as British caricature of the uppity American colonist, but was soon reclaimed as a symbol of the 13 colonies’ defiance of the British Crown; indeed, in most cartoons, ballads, and stage plays of the era, he is shown tricking, humiliating, and otherwise triumphing over British officials and soldiers and even John Bull himself. By the end of the Revolutionary War, the figure of Yankee Doodle had largely been absorbed into that of Brother Jonathan, with the latter acquiring the distinct appearance of a tall, thin, clean-shaven man dressed in striped pants and a top hat – usually second-hand and ill-fitting to illustrate the American values of thrift and practicality. In 1825, Brother Jonathan was immortalized as a symbol of New England by John Neal’s novel Brother Jonathan: or, the New Englanders, written to familiarize British readers with US language and customs. But just where the name “Brother Jonathan” came from is unclear. Tradition holds that the name originated with Connecticut governor John Trumbull, an ardent patriot whom George Washington affectionately referred to as “Brother Jonathan”. However, there is little evidence to support this, and the name likely originates from the English Civil War of 1642-1651, during which Puritan Roundheads and other forces opposed to King Charles I were disparagingly referred to as “Jonathans.” In the 18th Century, this by now common epithet was likely applied to the equally defiant American colonists.

But as time went by, the irreverent but largely heroic figure of Brother Jonathan began to take on more sinister undertones, becoming the mascot of the nativist Know-Nothing Party and appearing in political cartoons opposing the immigration of the Irish and Chinese and voting rights for African-Americans. Yikes. By the end of the American Civil War and the start of Reconstruction in 1865, Brother Jonathan’s utility as a national unifying symbol had come to an end. Not only was he a stereotypical Northern Yankee no self-respecting Southerner would identify with or rally behind, but he also represented a spirit of scrappy self-reliance and opposition to government authority that was quickly becoming passé. The Civil War had significantly increased the power and reach of the United States Government, and post-war America needed a new figure to symbolize Government authority and promote national unity. Enter Uncle Sam.

Unlike all the national personifications we have thus far discussed, Uncle Sam is unique in being the only one based on a real person – that is, if the official U.S. Government narrative is to be believed. As the story goes, the real-life Uncle Sam was one Samuel Wilson – no, not The Falcon from Marvel comic books, but a meat packer from Troy, New York. Born in Menotomy, Massachusetts – today known as Arlington – on September 13, 1766, Wilson was a childhood friend of one John Chapman, who would go on to become the legendary folk hero Johnny Appleseed.

While Wilson was still a child, he and his family moved to Mason, New Hampshire, where he served as a drummer boy on the village green. On the evening of April 18, 1775 – at the same time as Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride – Wilson’s drumming alerted the villagers of approaching British forces and allowed local militiamen to halt their advance. In 1781 at the age of fourteen, Wilson joined the Continental Army, where he served in a supporting role mending fences and tending, slaughtering, and butchering cattle to feed his fellow soldiers. His military service was brief, ending shortly after the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

In 1789, Wilson moved to Troy, New York, where he opened a meat packing plant. He soon gained a reputation for generosity, honesty, and fair dealing, and became affectionately known to the townspeople as “Uncle Sam.” In is this reputation which won him a contract to supply salted pork and beef to the U.S. Armed Forces during the War of 1812. To help distinguish meat earmarked for government use, Wilson began marking the barrels with the letters US for “United States” – an abbreviation which had not quite entered the vernacular at this point. On October 12, 1812, a group of government officials were touring the plant when one inspector inquired about the strange lettering on the barrels. A nearby worker, unfamiliar with the abbreviation, replied that it must stand for Uncle Sam. And thus a legend was born. American soldiers soon began referring to meat from Sam Wilson’s plant – and eventually all U.S. Government rations and equipment as “Bounty from Uncle Sam” or “Property of Uncle Sam” and even to themselves as “Uncle Sam’s Men.” By 1820, cartoons featuring Uncle Sam began appearing in New England newspapers, though at this point he looked very similar to the earlier Brother Jonathan: clean-shaven and dressed striped pants and a black top hat and tailcoat. He was also considerably fatter than his modern incarnations, resembling Benjamin Franklin in many early depictions. It was not until the 1830s that Uncle Sam was given his bright red pants, and not until the early 1860s that acquired his distinctive beard and gangly, hollow-cheeked physique – an appearance inspired by then-president Abraham Lincoln. This look, along with Uncle Sam’s iconic flag-themed outfit, was largely the creation of political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who is also credited with creating the modern image of Santa Claus and the donkey and elephant symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties. Nast originally used the figure of Uncle Sam to promote his utopian vision of the American Republic, such as in his 1869 cartoon Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner, in which Uncle Sam, along with his female counterpart Columbia, shares a harmonious turkey dinner with black, Chinese, Irish, Jewish, and other guests. But Nast’s vision was unusual for his time, as evidenced by an 1877 parody of his cartoon by George Frederick Keller which depicts the same scene as one of chaos, with all the guests behaving rudely and digging into their own national dishes rather than sharing Uncle Sam’s turkey. The message is clear: these people have no place at the American table. Indeed, the character and purpose of Uncle Sam have varied wildly depending on the national mood or who he was being depicted by. Originally a figure of internal unity, he became a symbol of American foreign intervention and military might, such as during the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1897 the Spanish-American War of 1898. Once an avowed foe of British national symbol John Bull, after the United States joined with Britain and other nations in crushing the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1900 the two became best of friends. The early 20th Century also saw Uncle Sam co-opted by corporate propaganda directed against labour organizations like the International Workers of the World, who were widely seen as foreign agitators bent on subverting and destabilizing the United States.

But the definitive and enduring depiction of Uncle Sam – the iconic I WANT YOU recruiting poster – would not come about until 1916, two years into the First World War. Though the United States would not join the conflict until the following year, by this point its entry seemed all but inevitable. Consequently, in July of that year the magazine Leslie’s Weekly commissioned illustrator James Montgomery Flagg to create an image urging Americans to prepare for war. Flagg based his design off an earlier and equally iconic British poster featuring Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, pointing at the viewer with the words BRITONS – LORD KITCHENER WANTS YOU. JOIN YOUR COUNTRY’S ARMY. GOD SAVE KING. Using himself as his model, Flagg painted Uncle Sam in the same pose, with the illustration first appearing on the cover of the July 6, 1916 issue of Leslie’s Weekly accompanied by the words WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR PREPAREDNESS? When the United States finally entered the First World War in April 1917, Flagg’s illustration was adapted into a recruiting poster, over four million of which were printed by war’s end.

This, at least, is the official story of Uncle Sam’s origin. Indeed, in 1931, a tombstone was erected at Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, where Samuel Wilson died in 1854, bearing the words:

“In loving memory of ‘Uncle Sam’, the name originating with Samuel Wilson.”

Three decades later in 1961, the Eighty-Seventh Congress of the United States under President John F. Kennedy passed an act declaring:

“The Congress salutes ‘Uncle Sam’ Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America’s National Symbol of ‘Uncle Sam.’”

While in 1989 Congress officially recognized Wilson’s birthday of September 13 as “Uncle Sam Day.”

However, considerable doubt surrounds Samuel Wilson’s claim to the origin of the Uncle Sam legend. For one thing, the earliest known mention of the character predates Wilson’s contract with the U.S. Government by two years. A footnote in an 1810 edition of the Baltimore magazine Niles’ Weekly Register defines Uncle Sam as “…a cant [slang] term in the army for the United States”, suggesting that the name was already well known by this time. Furthermore, the classic story of how one of Wilson’s plant workers mistook the abbreviation US for “Uncle Sam” comes from the May 12, 1830 edition of the New York Gazette. In that issue, Pheodorus Bailey, then Postmaster for New York City, recounted how he was among the government inspectors touring the Troy plant on October 12, 1812 when he overheard the worker make the fateful misunderstanding. The fact that this story was first written down nearly two decades after the alleged incident casts serious doubt on its authenticity.

But while Samuel Wilson may not, in fact, have been the inspiration for Uncle Sam, in a sense the figure we are familiar with today was a real person – or, rather, two real people. For while James Montgomery Flagg based his 1917 recruiting poster on himself, when tasked with updating the image during Second World War, he chose as his model a man named Walter Botts. Born in 1900 in Jackson Township, Indiana, Botts was a professional jazz trumpeter and sometime model who had previously posed for legendary illustrator Norman Rockwell. According to Botts, Flagg chose him because he

“…had the longest arms, the longest nose, and the bushiest eyebrows.”

And given that Flagg and Botts’ depictions are the ones that have endured to this day, it can be argued that they, and not Samuel Wilson, are the real Uncle Sam.

Bonus Fact:

Going back to Yankee Doodle and what the deal was with calling feathers macaroni, as with a lot of older songs, the tune and music that we today associate with “Yankee Doodle” was actually written much earlier than the 18th century. The melody may have been heard as early as the 1500s in Holland, with rather nonsensical lyrics about the harvest and farmers receiving their wage in buttermilk.

Over the next two centuries, that particular melody bounced around Europe and was re-appropriated for various other little jingles – like describing the struggles of English Puritans or used in nursery rhymes. For instance:

“Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it, nothing in it, nothing in it, but the binding round it”

– a rhyme that may or may not have been written before the tune started being used for Yankee Doodle). Another theory is the Hessians were the ones who originally brought the tune to the colonies from Germany, where it was being used in a drinking song.

Much like the origin of the melody, where the well-known lyrics came from is also not definitively known. One popular theory is that similar lyrics were first used to make fun of Oliver Cromwell, the 17th century English political and military leader, for fancying himself a fashionable person. The purported lyrics are sometimes said to have begun

“Yankee doodle come to town, upon on a Kentish pony.”

However, this seems unlikely considering the word “Yankee” didn’t come along until years after Cromwell, with the first known documented instance appearing in 1683- used by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (today’s New York) to disparage their English colonist neighbors in Connecticut.

Stemming from the Dutch “Janke” meaning “Little John,” “Yankee” was definitely intended as a belittling remark and became the European way to describe all American colonists, more or less being the equivalent of calling someone a “country bumpkin”, “redneck,” or “dumb hick” today.

The first known documented instance of the tune and the words “Yankee” and “doodle dandy” being put together in the same song, it seems, was around the 1750s during the French and Indian War. Prior to fighting for their independence against the British, the colonists were, of course, subjects of the English. Therefore, when the French and Brits went to war over territories in the New World in 1753, the colonists were recruited to join in on the English side.

Legend has it, whether true or not is anybody’s guess as no known hard, direct documented evidence has survived supporting this oft-told story, that a British army surgeon named Dr. Richard Shuckburg (who is known to have existed) saw the colonist recruits amble up to join the regular soldiers. Compared to the well-assembled and well-manicured English army, the colonists were a mess. Wearing “fashions that hadn’t been seen in England in a hundred years” and holding every weapon except those “familiar to the fresh, well-drilled British troops,” Dr. Shuckburg couldn’t help but laugh… and write a song. While not exactly the song we’ve come to know, the song that supposedly inspired Yankee Doodle, whether actually written by Dr. Shuckburg or not, went like this:

Brother Ephraim sold his cow
And bought him a commission
And then he went to Canada
To fight for the nation;

But when Ephraim,
he came home
He proved an arrant coward,
He wouldn’t fight the
Frenchmen there
For fear of being devoured.

Sheep’s head and vinegar
Buttermilk and tansy
Boston Is a Yankee town,
Sing “Hey, doodle dandy!”

The original sheet music for this noted that the song should be sung “through the nose, & in the West Country drawl & dialect.” In other words, it was meant to not only be mocking in lyrics, but tone. As for “Brother Ephraim,” this is thought to refer to Colonel Ephraim Williams of the Massachusetts militia, who ultimately was killed at the Battle of Lake George during the French and Indian War.

Upon completing the lyrics, purportedly Dr. Shuckburg gave it over to the Continental marching band who played “amid shouts of laughter in the English ranks.”

Whoever really wrote it, by 1768, the Boston Journal of the Times noted that the British were playing “that ‘Yankee Doodle’ song,” though the Times didn’t elaborate on what the lyrics were to this version. At this point, the song was constantly being remixed with slightly different lyrics, tunes and meanings, as was common for pretty much all popular songs at the time.

What united many of the earliest versions of this song was the not-so-subtle mocking of colonists as nothing more than moronic, unsophisticated, country yokels. For instance, after George Washington was made commander of the rebel armies, some unknown individual wrote the following lyrics,

Then Congress sent great Washington,
All clothed in power and breeches,
To meet old Britain’s warlike sons
And make some rebel speeches

Yet another version included the lines,

Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock, (a musket)
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock.

A slightly more familiar version to those of us today is also one of the earlier known versions, generally credited to Harvard sophomore and American Minuteman Edward Bangs:

Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding,
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.

Yankee Doodle keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy

Continuing to turn the lyrics around, with the colonists variously either taking pride in the song and/or directly mocking the British, we have lyrics like

Yankee Doodle is the tune
That we all delight in;
It suits for feasts, it suits for fun,
And just as well for fightin’.

Historians aren’t completely sure when the verse about sticking “a feather in his hat and calling it macaroni” came to be. The oldest known print version of this didn’t appear until all the way in 1842, published in London in the book The Nursery Rhymes of England by James Orchard Halliwell, though this particular lyric is obviously thought to date back to the American Revolution, partially due to the term being used here, which dates it somewhat, and how mocking the use of it was.

Stepping back a little to a term related to “macaroni,” there’s an interesting side tale about the evolution of the word “doodle” to one that’s more used today – “dude.” According to esteemed etymologists Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen, “dude” was first used in the 1880s as a way to describe young New York City men who had an affinity for being flamboyantly well-dressed, well-manicured and overly pretentious – in other words, a “dandy.” Using the very words that were used to mock colonists a hundred years earlier – “doodle dandy” – people started to call these 19th century men that as well, as a means to essentially call them pretentious fools. Later, this got shortened to “doodles,” then to “doods.” Eventually, the spelling was changed to “dude.” (And if you’re curious, the original female equivalent was dudine.)

Back to the related term “macaroni”- this term pertains to the habit of rich 18th century English men going on so-called “Grand Tours.” Sort of like the more modern “gap year,” young adult men who could afford it would take long trips around Europe, learning about the culture, art and history of neighboring countries. Particularly those from “new money” would sometimes come back with more refined tastes – like an appreciation for French art, fancy exotic clothes and Italian food.

These individuals’ often over the top attempts at trying to appear refined upon their return- speaking a mix of Latin and English and wearing foppish attire complete with massive “Macaroni” wigs and not one, but two pocket watches- were occasionally mocked for this. One of the nicknames they were given at this time was “macaronis.” The individuals were also considered to be part of the informal “Macaroni Club” and would refer to flamboyant fashion and the like as “very macaroni.” As for the origin of the term itself, it is presumed to originally derive from the fact that macaroni was a relatively exotic food for the British and must have been something at least some of these individuals raved about upon their return to England.

The Oxford Magazine described the so-called Macaroni Club members in 1770 as follows:

There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.””

In other words, when the particular lyrics “stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni” were added to the Yankee Doodle song, the author was essentially saying that colonists were such low class, moronic fools that they thought by sticking a simple feather in their hat, they were being extremely refined and fashionable.

In the end, there were possibly even hundreds of versions of Yankee Doodle in popular circulation during the American Revolution, some initially used by the British to mock their rebellious subjects. In turn, the Americans embraced the song, creating countless versions of their own and other times simply taking pride in the lyrics which were supposed to be mocking.

This brings us to October 19, 1781 when General Cornwallis formally surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia. Legend has it that, as a way to mock the defeated troops, famed French commandeer and hero of the American Revolution Marquis de Lafayette ordered the band to play “Yankee Doodle,” with the victorious soldiers singing along.