Somerset County was founded in the
Province of Maryland in 1666 and was named after
Mary Somerset, the sister-in-law of
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore.[2] The county did not have a flag initially. In 1693,
Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, commissioned the creation and design of a flag for the county.[3][4] The following year, King William III of England granted Somerset County a Royal Warrant to use the "King's Colours" as their county flag.[1] The King's Colours became the flag of Great Britain in 1707 but the
Kings of England had used it as a personal flag to symbolise the personal
Union of the Crowns of
England and
Scotland.[1] The Indian in the center represented the local Native Americans who had a large number of settlements in the Somerset County area.[5][6]
On the year of the flag's adoption, the colonists in Somerset County started to use it as a naval ensign.[5] In the following years, it appears that the flag fell into disuse. In 1958, members of the Olde Princess Anne Days Committee and some Somerset County Commissioners discovered a facsimile of the flag in the house of Joshua Miles, who permitted a reproduction to be created.[5] Later, in the 1990s, the flag inspired the design of the flag of the
University of Maryland as the Eastern Shore campus was located in Somerset County.[7]
