Uncle Sam based on real-life person

Pasadena Star News
By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted 7/03/2013 

Uncle Sam was a real person. The iconic representative of American government is reportedly based on a man named Samuel Wilson who was both a successful businessman and a government official.

Samuel Wilson was born in Arlington, Massachusetts - known as Menotomy, Massachusetts at the time - on September 13, 1766. He moved to Troy, New York with his older brother Ebenezer when he was 22 and Ebenezer 27.

Samuel was very involved in the Troy community. In 1808 he took the Oath of Office as the community’s Office Assessor. Soon after, he also took the Oath as Path Master, better known today as “road commissioner.”
 

Samuel and Ebenezer were quite the entrepreneurs. They opened several successful businesses under the name, “E & S Wilson,” among them a meatpacking firm. In 1812, E & S was successful in getting a contract to supply Elbert Anderson with the pork and beef he needed to fulfill a contract to supply rations for the U.S. Army.

The supplies of meat were shipped in barrels and the barrels were stamped “E.A - U.S.” indicating the supplier and the purchaser. Legend has it that first dockworkers, then eventually soldiers who knew the meat came from the Wilson packing company started saying they were being fed by “Uncle Sam”. 

The stamped barrels became the property of the U.S. government which evolved into calling all government property “Uncle Sam’s.”

You are probably wondering if the white-haired, goateed image with the top hat we are so familiar with from recruitment posters is the image of Samuel Wilson. Alas no. That well known image was created by James Montgomery Flagg in 1917. It is based on a British recruitment poster image of Lord Kitchener, a British Field Marshall famous for his imperial campaigns. 

If you want to see what Samuel Wilson looked like you can visit his Massachusetts birthplace where a memorial statue stands in honor of their famous native son. Uncle Sam Day is celebrated every September 13th. 

The official home and final resting place of Samuel Wilson is in Troy, New York which also has a memorial to Wilson in the city’s Riverfront Park.

There is some evidence that the term “Uncle Sam” might have been used to refer to the government before Samuel Wilson stamped his first meat barrel with the familiar “U.S.”  But there is no doubt that Samuel Wilson, his barrels of meat, and those hungry soldiers provided the spark that made “Uncle Sam” a household term. On September 15, 1961 the United States Congress made it official when then they “resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives that the Congress solutes Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York as the progenitor of America’s National symbol of Uncle Sam.”  

Have a wonderful and safe July 4th.