Another...
"Two presidents-to-be crossed with Washington, James Madison and James Monroe, are believed to be holding the flag in the painting. History, though, says nothing about Monroe actually being aboard Washington's boat. And the flag that he gripped, with stars in a circle, did not fly until some eight months after the crossing. John Marshall made the crossing. He would become a chief justice of Supreme Court. Rivals Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton also made the trip."
All of those references (as often happens on the internet) quote from the same erroneous source. Madison was never there (the closest he ever came was years before when he graduated Princeton, then known as the College of NJ).