Captain William Driver of Salem, Mass., gets the credit for this one. He was the well-known shipmaster of the Charles Doggett. His career at sea began in 1816, when he ran away from home and got on as a cabin boy. In 1824, as he was leaving on the first voyage on his own ship, his mother and a number of his friends presented him with an American flag for Driver to fly on his ship. When the wind unfurled the flag for the first time, Driver exclaimed, "Old Glory!"

Driver sailed for several more years, traveling to China and India and the South Pacific, and retired in 1837 when his wife, Martha, died of cancer. Driver, 34 and the father of three young children, moved to Nashville to be near his three brothers, who operated a store. Driver remarried, to Sarah Parks, and the couple had more children.

Driver flew his beloved flag outside his house on holidays, rain or shine. The flag had been designed to fly on a ship, so it was big. He and his family repaired the flag in 1860, sewing on 10 more stars to reflect the current number of states in the Union; he also added a small anchor, to represent his time at sea.

He was in Nashville when the Civil War began. Tennessee was one of the states that seceded from the Union, and supporters of the Confederacy wanted to destroy Driver's "Old Glory" flag because it had become so popular as a symbol of the United States. People in town knew that he had the flag, that he would never let it go, yet no amount of searching could find the flag, and Driver wasn't telling. When one contingent of Confederate soldiers arrived and announced that they were going to search his house, Driver blocked the doorway and asked to see a search warrant; the soldiers left without searching the house. A related episode occurred later in the war: an armed group of Confederate soldiers brandishing weapons demanded that Driver step aside and let them search his house; he told that them they would have to shoot him first, no shots were fired, the soldiers went away, and the flag remained hidden.

Union forces captured Nashville on Feb. 5, 1862, and raised the Union flag over the capital. Driver went to the see commander of the troops who occupied the capital and handed him "Old Glory," which had been sewn up inside some bed covering. Driver, who was 60 at the time, insisted on climbing up to the flag tower to replace the rather smallish Union flag with his treasured "Old Glory."

The 6th Ohio Infantry were the unit that accompanied Driver on his flag-raising expedition to the Tennessee capital. The unit adopted "Old Glory" as their motto. The story of Driver's devotion to the flag and the name he had for it got passed around, and the name became associated with the American flag in general.

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