Protection of the Flag Monument

Located in Academy Park at 715 South Main Street in Athens, Pennsylvania, the Protection of the Flag Monument was completed in 1902. Erected on the front of the lot where it stands, it occupies the center of the site's western half. The front of the monument may be reached from Main Street via a concrete sidewalk while the monument's eastern side may be approached via a brick walkway, which is flanked by two stones affixed with bronze commemorative plaques. Situated between those stones is a state historical marker and a flag pole.[2]

The monument itself, which is situated 50 feet east of the sidewalk, is surrounded by a 26-foot ornamented, raised granite coping square. The monument's polished, Stony Creek granite pedestal, which stands at the center of that square, is composed of a plinth, molded base, die, and a cap, is roughly nine feet tall, and is topped by a roughly eight-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a wounded adult Revolutionary War-era soldier holding a rifle and a young, barefooted drummer boy. It was created by sculptor George T. Brewster.[2]

The monument's sculpture was commissioned in 1900 by Joseph Whipple Stickler and his wife, Charlotte Snell Stickler, and was unveiled in June 1902.[2] Stickler, a native of New York who became a successful realtor and philanthropist, had wed Charlotte Snell in Hoboken, New Jersey; Snell, who had attended school at the Athens Academy which had previously been located where the monument now stands,[3][4] was a daughter of Captain John Snell, an Athens resident who "was one of the first white children born in Bradford county about the time of the Wyoming Massacre," according to historian Henry Hall.[5]