Taken from the shield in the coat of arms of the family of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, the Maryland state flag embodies the yellow-and-black arms of his paternal family with the red-and-white colors and cross-bottony design of his maternal family, the Crosslands. (It has been disputed that the red-and-white colors are instead from the Mynne family, the family name of the wife of George Calvert.) Despite the fact that Maryland remained in the Union, many Marylanders wore the red-and-white “secession colors†in sympathy with the South. Although a pre Civil War version consisted of the Maryland state seal on a blue background, by the end of the war, both the yellow-and-black Calvert arms and the red-and-white cross-bottony design epitomized Maryland, and this version was adopted as the state flag in 1904. Taken from the shield in the coat of arms of the family of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, the Maryland state flag embodies the yellow-and-black arms of his paternal family with the red-and-white colors and cross-bottony design of his maternal family, the Crosslands. (It has been disputed that the red-and-white colors are instead from the Mynne family, the family name of the wife of George Calvert.) Despite the fact that Maryland remained in the Union, many Marylanders wore the red-and-white “secession colors†in sympathy with the South. Although a pre Civil War version consisted of the Maryland state seal on a blue background, by the end of the war, both the yellow-and-black Calvert arms and the red-and-white cross-bottony design epitomized Maryland, and this version was adopted as the state flag in 1904.
