35-Star U.S. Lincoln Mourning Flag, Boston, 1865.
The field of this small cotton flag is composed of 13 horizontal, alternating red and white stripes, press dyed onto the field, together with a dark blue press dyed union/canton that extends through the seventh stripe from the top. Thirty-five white, five-pointed stars have been press dyed onto the canton and a larger center star is surrounded by two concentric rings of 11 and 19 stars. One additional star graces each corner of the canton.
This flag was once tacked or glued to a small stick for waving at parades or patriotic rallies.
Superior Court Judge John T. Ball, of Santa Clara County, California, acquired this flag in 1994 from James J. Ferrigan III, the manager of The Flag Store in Sonoma, California, who had it consigned from Mrs. Bernice Best of 601 Laurel Ave., San Mateo, California.
In her letter Mrs. Best related that: "This flag was flown from the front porch of my husband's maternal grandfather's house in Boston in 1865, as supposedly everyone did, to celebrate the end of the Civil War. It was flying there the day President Lincoln was assassinated. He kept the flag properly and folded in a drawer where I discovered it and had it framed for him".
Exhibition History
Courtroom of Judge John T. Ball, Judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court, San Jose, CA
Provenance: Acquired by the Zaricor Flag Collection in 2002 from the Judge John T. Ball Collection of San Jose, CA.
ZFC Important Flag
Item is Framed 34" x 47"
Sources:
Mastai, Boleslaw and Marie-Louise D'Otrange, The Stars and The Stripes: The American Flag as Art and as History from the Birth of the republic to the Present, Knopf, New York, 1973.
35 Star Flag - (1863-1865) (U.S.), Flags of the World, 23 April 2012, from: http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-1863.html
Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection