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This Culpepper flag was used in the Revolution by soldiers from Culpepper County, Virginia and it is currently being used as their flag. The unit originated in 1775.
The central symbol is a coiled rattlesnake about to strike, and below it the words 'Don't tread on me!' At each side was the inscription 'Liberty of Death!' - those words of Patrick Henry, spoken that March at the second Virginia revolutionary convention. At the flag's top was the inscription 'The Culpepper Minute Men. The flag appears to predate the more famous Rhode Island rattlesnake banner presented by Col. Christopher Gadsden to the South Carolina Provincial Congress in February, 1776, and is contemporaneous with the Fifth Pennsylvania Regiment rattlesnake flag. Both these banners also bore the words 'Don't tread on me." |
American Flags
