Francis Hopkinson
— He Billed Congress for a Cask of Wine

Five confirmed primary documents from the most versatile of the signers. The flag design claim. Washington's letter declining the musical dedication. The Battle of the Kegs. The admiralty judgeship. The record of a man who contributed to the republic in every medium available to him.

Francis Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia in 1737. He graduated from the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1757, one of its first graduates, and went on to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1761. Poet, satirist, painter, musician, inventor: he designed the seal of the American Philosophical Society, the seal for New Jersey, and later the seal of the Board of Admiralty. In 1776, New Jersey sent him to the Continental Congress. He voted for independence on July 2 and signed the Declaration on August 2.

Hopkinson had known Benjamin Franklin personally for years. His satire supporting the Patriot cause circulated widely through the colonial press.

On June 14, 1777, Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the official national flag. Francis Hopkinson, then serving as chairman of the Continental Navy Board's Middle Department, had submitted a design. In May 1780, three years after the flag's adoption, Hopkinson wrote to the Board of Admiralty requesting payment for his design of "the flag of the United States of America," along with the Great Seal, the seal of the Board of Admiralty and the Board of Treasury, and several other devices.

His requested compensation: a quarter cask of public wine. The Board of Treasury rejected the claim on the grounds that he was a paid public servant and the work was part of his duties. The 1780 letter is the primary source for Hopkinson's claim. It is documented in the Journals of the Continental Congress at the Library of Congress. No original drawing or example of his flag design survives.

In January 1778, residents of Bordentown sent floating mines down the Delaware River toward British ships occupying Philadelphia. The mines failed, but the British spent hours shooting at anything floating in the water. Hopkinson witnessed the episode and turned it into a ballad, "The Battle of the Kegs," published in January 1778 and widely reprinted across the colonies. It was among the most circulated pieces of political satire of the war.

Washington received a copy. The ballad is at the Library of Congress and in the collected writings of Hopkinson.

After the war, Hopkinson was appointed Judge of Admiralty for Pennsylvania in 1779, reappointed in 1780 and 1787, and then named by Washington as District Judge of Pennsylvania in 1790. In 1788 he published a collection of musical compositions, Seven Songs for the Harpsichord, which he dedicated to Washington. Washington wrote back with affectionate reluctance, he noted he could not sing a single note and feared he could not defend the collection's quality. That letter is at Founders Online.