Congress once passed a resolution naming the man behind Uncle Sam. Many historians think it picked the wrong man, or at least the wrong story.

The official version says Samuel Wilson, a meatpacker in Troy, New York, supplied beef to the army in the War of 1812. Wikipedia reports that the barrels were stamped "E.A.-U.S." for the contractor Elbert Anderson. Soldiers who knew Wilson as "Uncle Sam" tied the stamp to him, and the joke spread. In 1961 Congress called Wilson the "progenitor" of the national symbol.

The evidence is thinner than that. According to Vocabulary.com's Word Routes column, the Wilson story was first told in an 1830 New York Gazette article, long after the war. A 1908 study by Albert Matthews judged it highly unlikely.

Earlier uses exist. The same column says the earliest known national use is in a Bennington, Vermont, newspaper of December 23, 1812, from a conscript doubting the war. History.com adds that an 1810 Navy midshipman's diary already mentions Uncle Sam, and Wikipedia names him as Isaac Mayo. That would put the phrase before the war began. Vocabulary.com also notes that Howe's Almanac used "Uncle Sam" in 1808 to 1811 only as a generic phrase about farm work.

The Troy Post of September 7, 1813, compared the term to "John Bull," Britain's nickname. It suggested the "U.S." stamped on government wagons inspired it. Etymonline records 1813 as the first use and says the OED treats later claims about officials named Samuel as unfounded.

Wilson may still have helped the name spread locally, but he probably did not invent it. A joke on the initials fits the evidence best.

The face came later. Etymonline says the figure grew common in cartoons around 1850 and gradually replaced "Brother Jonathan," largely through Thomas Nast. History.com says Nast gave him whiskers, a top hat and striped trousers in the 1870s. History.com adds that James Montgomery Flagg used his own face for the goateed figure in the World War I recruiting poster.

So Uncle Sam is a rare national symbol whose name came from a joke on two letters, and whose origin story was added afterward.