Insurance Company of North America Star Fire Mark
name: label: maker
content: unknown
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Beginning in the 1750s, American insurance companies issued fire marks to policyholders to signify that their property was insured against fire damage. The fire marks bore the name and logo of the insurer, and often included the customer’s policy number. The policyholders would then affix the mark to their home or business. For owners the mark served as proof of insurance and a deterrent against arson. For insurance companies the mark served as a form of advertising, and some companies used the mark to alert volunteer firefighters that their efforts to save the property would be rewarded.
label: Description (Brief)
content: The Insurance Company of North America issued a wavy six-pointed star as its fire mark from 1794 to 1796. After 1796 INA switched their mark to an eagle, resulting in the INA star being a very rare mark, and in 1928, it was said there were no existing INA star fire marks. When a house on Race Street was discovered to have an outline of an INA plate on it, a search was conducted to find this mark, eventually discovered in a second-hand store in Baltimore, Maryland. Prized for many years, this mark is now believed to be a forgery. Closer examination revealed that the star was cut with metal shears and has filing marks from 20th century tools, and the weathering on the shield was done artificially. A group of influential citizens in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania founded the Insurance Company of North America in 1792. The INA was the first joint stock insurance company in the United States, and focused its business on marine and fire insurance. The Insurance Company of North America merged with the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in 1982 to become the CIGNA Corporation.
label: Description
content: In 1928, it was said there were no existing six-point wavy star fire marks of the INA’s first issue. A comprehensive search was done to find this mark. It began with on a house on Race St in Philadelphia where there was a faint mark of an INA plate on the brick. The owners of this old shield were traced, but the fire mark found belonged to the Fire Association, not of the INA. Fancifully, “closer examination showed under this more recent Mark a faint outline which proved that the shield originally carried the ‘star’!” The family said the star was sold to a secondhand dealer in Baltimore. The INA proceeded to comb through each secondhand store in Baltimore until the star was found and matched to the board “precisely – nail hole for nail hole, line for line!”
label: Description
content: Prized for many years, it was first suspected to be a fake in 1960s when examination exposed the weathering of the wood shield to be unnatural and was probably baked and wired to create an antique look while the lead star to was cut with twentieth century shears.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
topic: label: classified
content: Fire Fighting
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Fire Fighting and Law Enforcement
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of CIGNA Museum and Art Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2005.0233.0381
label: accession number
content: 2005.0233
label: catalog number
content: 2005.0233.0381
objectType: label: Object Name
content: fire mark
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: sheet lead (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: board: 15 1/2 in x 12 in; 39.37 cm x 30.48 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall:;