While doing more research on Union headquarters designating flags I came across a great website. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History’s flag collection is now online! Just follow the link. If it does not pull up the flags, just type in “designating flag” in the search box.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/main?edan_q=Designating%20Flags&edan_start=0&edan_fq=topic%3A%22Designating+Flags%22
This is good and bad. The good thing is there are a lot of flags. The bad thing is, I’m not so sure are all of them are war time flags. A lot of them may be post-war. In all honestly, it looks like some flag maker in the late 1800s looked at Flags of the Army of the United States Carried During the War of the Rebellion published in 1887 and made copies of everything in there.
Here are some discrepancies I have found.
I first found the site searching again for a surviving example of Twenty-First Army Corps flags. Well, I found them. Only, unlike the surviving Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps examples that are 6 feet on the staff and 4 feet on the fly, these are the opposite. They are 4 feet on the staff and 6 feet on the fly. Just like the 1887 Flags book.
http://www.kshs.org/exhibits/flags/graphics/57185lg.jpg
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1375388
There are also flags for units that never existed. For example, there are designating flags for the 3rd brigades of each division in the Eleventh Corps. Unfortunately, the 3 divisions of the Eleventh Corps only ever had 2 brigades each.
Many of the flags are different than surviving examples in state archives. Also, many are from corps that I have serious doubts were ever issued flags, such as the Twenty-Second Corps.
Now, some are clearly labeled as being made post war. Some are labeled during the war, and some do not have any dates at all. So some certainly are legitimate.
So, I hope you can forgive me my long winded post. Here are some questions I have.
1. Am I reading too much into this? The flags are there, they exist. Take them for what they are?
2. Does anybody recognize the name of Robert C. Toy as a flag maker? He appears to have made a great many of the flags around 1890-97 and most are patterned on the flag pictures on the 1887 Flags book.
Thank you for reading.