Nice to hear from you here. More follows:

>>>>But I have the 1931 booklet from the State of Alabama declaring Marschall as the designer of the First Confederate Flag, and the 1917 Report of the SCV "Stars and Bars" Committee declaring Smith as the designer of the First Confederate Flag (Signed by Jesssica Randolph Smith in 1923, no less). You mean they are both wrong?? Did the descendants of these southern patriots have selective memories or what? :-)>>>>>

If you go through the Phillip Thian book on the CS flags that can be found at the Library of Congress and Duke University with the hundreds of hand drawn water colors for each flag submission, or even the abridged version at the VA Historical Society in Richmond, or even the flags scrapbook at the National Archives, you will not find anywhere in those sources the names of Orren Randolph Smith or Nicola Marschall. Smith's own statement mentions that once Ft. Sumter was fired upon he realized that the Confederacy needed a flag. Well this was April 12th, 1861 and the first flag was hoisted on March 4th.

The Marschall claim appears around the same time championed by the Alabama UDC. His claim, to me, held a lot more water as he was in the right state at the right time and moved in the cirlces of the state's government.

But when we found the Miles report that mentions that none of the flags offered were suitable and that the committee designed it, probably inspired buy the submission of one lady (as reported by the late Devereaux Cannon in an essay), then that clinches it for me.

I doubt that any money was forthcoming for designing the first CS flag and I do not recall any such requests from those that sent in designs at all. But I have been through these books and sources and you do not find Marschall or Smith's names in any of them.

>>>>Then again, as head of the flag committee could Miles have been conciously trying to avoid recognizing the true designer for fear of having to pay him? What about the claim that Marschall designed uniforms for the CSA - any truth in that?>>>>

Not one shred for the flags. I am not a uniforms guy and know of his claim for that so I do not have a clue to be honest. However, in what little I have read I have not found anything to back his this claim either. Gray uniforms had been in the American military before the Civil War on the militia scale as well as US regulars in the War of 1812 - Winfield Scott's Brigade in fact wore gray. It is because of their valor at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane that West Point cadets were gray to this day.

>>>>>And that note about Betsy Ross's grandson proclaiming (in 1870, merely 93 years after the Flag of the United States was officially adopted) that his ancestory sewed the very first American Flag on direct commission from George Washington himself - you mean that's no more valid than the legend of Washington and the Cherry Tree? >>>>>

That's a good one!

What is most interesting to me is that these flag claims all appear within a few years of each other - the Ross and the two CW flag claims.

Greg Bigs