Hi Allan,

More below:

>>>>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.>>>

Mackey's OR report states two flags taken by the 33rd Iowa at Helena. Also, the reference notes for each flag in Iowa both state that Col. Mackey donated them to the state.

As I have stated, one is a duplicate of the flag used by Dobbin's 1st Arkansas Cavalry in the Old State House Colelction and the other is a Second National variant - white field, red canton and blue cross without stars - which are placed around the cross in a circle within the canton.

I have not seen any star design like this before outside of Texas secession era flags and some Texas unit flags as well.
Yet I know of no Texas units at Helena.

>>>>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. >>>>

Do not forget the newspapers which communicated with each other telegraphically quite often and the river traffic which could quickly bring other newspapers to the area. Within a day or two of the Confederates adopting the First National flag on March 4, 1861 in Montgomery, AL, a copy was hoisted in Charleston, SC - thanks to the telegraph.

Due to the style of this flag it is most likely home-made but I have not seen it up close to be sure.

So we have Mackey's 33rd Iowa taking two flags and Heath's 33rd Missouri taking one - and the 43rd Indiana got to help capture men. So, if there were only two regiments in that defile, one was carrying two flags.

Greg Biggs