Coat of arms of George Washington

The coat of arms of the Washington family was first used to identify the family in the twelfth century, when the Washington family took possession of Washington Old Hall in County Durham, England. This coat of arms is the one that was used by George Washington, President of the United States of America from 1789 to 1797.

The design (three red stars over two horizontal red bars on a white field) is often said to have inspired the Stars and Stripes flag, and has been used since 1938 as the coat of arms and flag of the District of Columbia. It is also found on the Purple Heart.

The notion that it inspired the design of the American flag dates to the celebratory and patriotic climate of the year 1876, which saw the publication of Washington: A Drama in Five Acts, a drama in verse by the popular English poet Martin Farquhar Tupper. In it, Benjamin Franklin proclaims that the design of the Stars and Stripes was based on the coat of arms of George Washington. "We, and not he—it was unknown to him," Franklin says, "took up his coat of arms, and multiplied and magnified it every way to this, our glorious national banner." The play was widely performed, and its message resonated with the American public. The story was repeated many times, including regularly in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas. Undeniably the coat of arms does consist of two elements, the stars and the stripes, and a red and white coloration, but it lacks any blue coloration.

The simple blazon is:

Some authorities in the twelfth century displayed the arms with the colours reversed (gules two bars argent, in chief three mullets of the second). An almost identical coat of arms was used by the Le Moyne family, who were described as landowners at Grafham in Huntingdonshire in the reign of Henry II. Their arms was: "Argent, two bars Sable, in chief three mullets of the second", with only the colour of the mullets and bars being different.

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