Want to restore a 1863 Confederate Flag

[jbkelly]

I have a 19" x 32", 11 star, Confederate flag captured in 1863 after the battle of Vicksburg. It appears to be made from silk. Does anyone know someone who could restore this flag. It has no serious damage. It just needs some re-stitching and, because it was folded for almost 150 years, it has creases that it would be nice to remove. I live in Minnesota, near Minneapolis, but I guess I could ship it anywhere.

[NAVA1974]

I have a 19" x 32", 11 star, Confederate flag captured in 1863 after the battle of Vicksburg. It appears to be made from silk. Does anyone know someone who could restore this flag. It has no serious damage. It just needs some re-stitching and, because it was folded for almost 150 years, it has creases that it would be nice to remove. I live in Minnesota, near Minneapolis, but I guess I could ship it anywhere.

Here are two places to explore. If you get an email address send them a couple of photos and ask them what ballpark costs they would estimate. For a proper job on a silk flag I would guess you are talking $5 to $10,000 minimum. But if you do have an authentic flag, it would be worth it to have it properly conserved.
Nick

First choice:
Textile Preservation Associates
18943 Keedysville Rd
Keedysville, MD 21756
301-432-4529

Second choice, but may be defunct:
Museum of American Textile History
491 Dutton Street
Lowell, MA 01854
Telephone:978.441.0400

[jbkelly]

Thanks for the help. I'll give them a call.

[AmericaHurrah]

That size is exactly that of the hundreds of common fakes that flood the marketplace. You should certainly get it looked at before proceeding.

Maybe send an email to: info@jeffbridgman.com

[NAVA1974]

That size is exactly that of the hundreds of common fakes that flood the marketplace. You should certainly get it looked at before proceeding.

Dear jbkelly:

If the flag is a fake, Textile Preservation Associates would be the first to tell you it's a piece of cr4p. But I agree that Jeff Bridgman knows his flags, too.

If you already have photos, please post them here and we can give you an opinion that is free of charge! A close up of the stars will be most helpful.

Nick

ps: The flake flags that flooded eBay a few years ago were nearly all cotton. You can see many of them at:
eBay Guides - SAVAGE-STATION Fake Civil War Flag Spotting Guide
(If the flag has "battle honors" that appear to have been rubber-stamped onto the bars, don't waste your time taking a picture. Just burn the flag, or sue the jerk who sold it to you.)

[jbkelly]

Dear jbkelly:

If the flag is a fake, Textile Preservation Associates would be the first to tell you it's a piece of cr4p. But I agree that Jeff Bridgman knows his flags, too.

If you already have photos, please post them here and we can give you an opinion that is free of charge! A close up of the stars will be most helpful.

Nick

ps: The flake flags that flooded eBay a few years ago were nearly all cotton. You can see many of them at:
eBay Guides - SAVAGE-STATION Fake Civil War Flag Spotting Guide
(If the flag has "battle honors" that appear to have been rubber-stamped onto the bars, don't waste your time taking a picture. Just burn the flag, or sue the jerk who sold it to you.)

Nick,

I did not get this flag from the Internet. I found this flag in a shoe box. I knew that there were 7 5" x 7" glass negatives in the box, and I looked around until I found them. These negatives were owned by a neighbor of my parents. When she went into a nursing home, my mother was appointed as her guardian. There was an American Flag (45 stars - 12" x 17", silk), a 2nd flag I had never looked at that closely (the confederate 19" x 32" silk flag), about a dozen envelopes - all addressed to the neighbor at two different addresses, and 7 glass negatives.

The reason I looked for the negatives is because my son's father-in-law is trading some labor with me. I am a computer consultant and helped him with some malware problems he was having. He has a scanner that can take large format negatives, and my scanner can only handle small formats. He offered to scan the glass negatives for me.

A hobby I have had, for the last 10 years, is finding and restoring old family photographs. To help identify people in the photographs, I also took up geneology. I have restored more than 1000 photographs and have become quite good at it. So it was the glass plate negatives that I was interested in and had never closely inspected the two flags.

The confederate flag has a tag on it. Just reading that tells a lot.

Here are the photos I have taken of the flag.

I believe the tag reads as follows:


Front of Tag:


Article: Rebel Flag
Captured by
Contributed by Lieut Jas Casler


Back of Tag:

(In pencil) Headquarter flag of the 1st Arkansas
Confederate Reg

(In pen - written over "1st") 3

(In pen - under pencil entry) Captured at Sunny Side
Landing
1863 after Siege of Vicsburg

[jbkelly]

I posted a replay with photos, but it is not appearing on the site.

[Peter Ansoff]

I posted a replay with photos, but it is not appearing on the site.

It's there now. The spam filter grabbed it for some reason.

Best,

Peter Ansoff

[coasterville]

Don't worry about it not appearing right away. This forum has some sort of filter that catches things to send to the moderators before it lets the post go through. You will usually get a message to that effect right after you post.

It's not even your low post count that triggers it, though that might be a factor.

Your flag looks beautiful, but note that I am in no way, shape, or form qualified to render any kind of opinion.

[NAVA1974]

Dear jbkelley:

That looks like a late 19th century flag to me. And by "late" I mean second half. That could be from the 1860's.

Do you have any idea what museum that flag was de-accessed from? It could have been a post of the Grand Army of the Republic and when that post was broken up after the death of the last veterans the artifacts may have been sold off or given to relatives of the veterans.

What you want to do to this flag is "conserve" it, not restore it. Even if it was a flag from the 1890's it is in excellent condition and needs no "restoration". Textile Preservation Associates ought to get this to stabilize and frame it for you. However, you may get more info on the Arkansas connection if you contact the US Civil War Flag forum. You can find them at:
The Civil War Flags Message Board - Message Index

You cannot post pictures onto that CW site, but you CAN post the link to the photographs you posted on THIS site.

Good luck with that - I would certainly like to see what those guys at the Civil War Message Board say.

Nick