U.S. 36 Star Parade Flag, 1865.
The cotton gauze-like field of this 36-star flag is fully printed. The 36-star US flags became official on 4 July 1865, however entrepreneurs made them available as soon as statehood for Nevada loomed on the national horizon in 1863. Thirty six-star flags, like this one, were widely available in April of 1865 to celebrate Lee's surrender at Appomattox and again later to mourn the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln - two of the most significant events in United States history.

The exact use to which this flag was put to is so far unknown but it was flag #69 in the acclaimed flag collection of noted antique dealer Mr. Boleslaw Mastai and his wife Marie-Louise d'Otrange Mastai, formerly of New York City and later of Amagansett, Long Island.

The 6 x 6 rectilinear patterns were by far and away the most popular star fields for use on the 36-star flags, which would remain current until the admission of Nebraska in 1867. So many of these 36-star flags were produced that many were overprinted for political campaigns in the last half of the 19th century.

See ZFC3215 & ZFC2495 for examples of such overprints.

Provenance: Acquired by the Zaricor Flag Collection in 2002 from the Mastai Flag Collection through auction at Sotheby's of New York City.

ZFC Noteworthy Flag

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.

36 Star Flag - (1865-1867) (U.S.), Flags of the World, 28 April 2012, from: http://flagspot.net/flags/us-1865.html

The Many Constellations of Old Glory, Historical Flags of Our Ancestors! 28 April 2012, from: http://www.loeser.us/flags/us_flags.html

Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection