Stars and Stripes (1818)
There was considerable concern that the addition of a new stripe for each new state would create hopeless confusion. Therefore, Congress established the still current law that provided that after July 4, 1818 the flag would show thirteen stripes and a new star each time a state was added to the Union. Under this policy, the 1818 Stars and Stripes became a twenty-star and thirteen-stripe flag representing the twenty states at the time and the thirteen original colonies.
Although the Pawnee Indians of Republic County, with the encouragement of Zebulon Pike, were the first to raise an American Flag over Kansas, it is likely that the first White settlement to have the Stars and Stripes displayed was Cantonment Martin. Established in 1819 by the U.S. Army on the Isle on Vache, it would have been the twenty-star flag that served as the Cantonment's garrison flag.
Courtesy hmdb.org
