Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
March 6, 1814
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 71
Notes:
The Grand Federal Procession in Philadelphia, celebrating the Ratification of the Constitution, took place on the Fourth of July 1788. The coachmakers were one of forty-five trades that participated. Their display was described in detail by Francis Hopkinson: "Preceded by Mr. John Bringhurst, in a phaeton drawn by 2 horses, and bearing a draft of a coach on a white silk flag. A stage nine feet high, sixteen feet long, and eight feet wide, on a carriage drawn by four horses, representing their shop, with mr. George Way, master-workman, a body and carriage-maker, a wheelwright, a trimmer, and a harness-maker, all at work, and a painter ornamenting a body; on each side of the stage, the words, ‘no tax on American carriages;' in the centre the standard, of yellow silk, emblazoned with the arms of the profession, viz. Three coaches on a blue field, the chariot of the sun appearing through the clouds — motto — 'the clouds dispell'd, we shine forth;' the staff decorated with the implements of the trade; ten masters, each bearing a yellow silk flag, with the names of the states that have adopted the new federal consitution, in letters of gold, on a blue field, five walking before and five behind the stage; the whole followed by workmen in the different branches of the trade, to the number of one hundred and fifty." Hopkinson, Account of the grand federal procession, Philadelphia, July 4, 1788. To which is added, a letter on the same subject (Philadelphia, 1788), p. 9.
The only two banners carried in the Philadelphia procession known to survive are those of the Carpenters' Company (housed at that institution) and the tobacconists (owned by the Thomas Leiper House and on deposit at the Library Company of Philadelphia).
