Greg,

I visited the flag message board for the first time as a result of this discussion. I had never got around to looking at it. There was a lot of interesting information and while searching I found where someone had posted the Iowa website I linked above.

I had a few questions I'm hoping you can answer. In that same thread a poster named Shawn listed the entire inventory in the Iowa collection. That inventory lists only one flag belonging to Bell's (29th/37th) Infantry Regiment. How did you determine that a Second National pattern flag in their collection also belonged to this regiment? I noticed while reading the posts here that there is some question as to whether 1 or 2 flags were taken by the 33rd Iowa from Bell's Regiment. If you have evidence that the Second National also belonged to this regiment, that would seem to confirm that two flags were captured by the 33rd Iowa.

I have seen a reference that the Second National flag was adopted in the east on May 1st, 1863. Considering how slowly news traveled during this time, would six weeks have been enough for an Arkansas based regiment to acquire such a flag? Bell's Regiment began the march for Helena during the middle of June.

Allan