35 Star U.S. National Color - New York Quartermaster Depot.
This color bears the distinctive square canton seen on New York Depot national colors. It is not definitive, but it has been suggested that the NY Quartermaster depot was instrumental in utilizing the square canton on national colors, as they are most often seen in flags issued in New York as well as Cincinnati.
The Howard Michael Madaus sub-collection of Civil War Military Flags was assembled from a variety of sources over a thirty year period of collecting (1970-2000) before being acquired by the Zaricor Collection in 2000. The sub-collection attempts to present an example of each of the major types of depot contractor regulation flags and colors carried by Union forces at the basic unit level. These units range from regiments, battalions, companies, batteries, and the variety of types of general military flags.
This sub-collection (Howard Michael Madaus collection), added to the Zaricor Civil War collection, is the largest and (while not complete) most comprehensive collection of the military flags carried by the Union Army during the Civil War outside of state repositories designated by the War Department for the disposition of these flags after the War and those collections in public museums. In fact, this private collection is larger and more comprehensive than many public museum collections in the United States.
ZFC1484 is the companion staff.
Provenance:
• U.S. National Color - New York Quartermaster Depot.
• Acquired by trade with Chicago area arms dealer, Arbold Marcus Chernoff, 1974.
• Ex-Madaus Collection #2
• Acquired by ZFC by Private Sale from the Madaus Flag Collection, 2000
Sources:
Madaus, Howard M.- Whitney Smith, The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord and Conflict, VZ Publications, Santa Cruz, 2006.
US Army Quartermaster General, Flags of the Army of the United States carried during the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865, to designate the headquarters of the different armies, army corps, divisions and brigades, Washington, D.C., 1887.
Todd, Frederick P., American Military Equipage 1851-1872, Volume 2, Providence, The Company of Military Historians, 1977.
Katcher, Phillip, Flags of the American Civil War, 2: Union, London, Osprey, 1993.
Madaus, Howard M., correspondence to Ben Zaricor, 29 March 2000, Zaricor Flag Collection Archives.
Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection
