I did some digging into this and will offer that in a minute. We know the flag came from one of the colonels of the 37th Mississippi Infantry. We know that the battle honors were there because Fonda Thomsen found their traces on the red wool field. Indeed the 37th Miss was not at Champion's Hill (Baker's Creek) or Port Gibson so why those honors?

My sources for the 37th Alabama show them at Baker's Creek (Sifakis) but not at Baker's Creek (Tim Smith's book on Champion Hill). They were in Moore's Brigade of Forney's Division and the only divisions at Champion Hill were Loring's, Bowen's and Stevenson's. The 37th Alabama doesn't even show up in his text.

The Mobile Depot flag of the 37th Alabama survives and is held by Auburn University in Alabama. I bears battle honors for Corinth (1862), Hatchie Bridge (1862) and Vicksburg (1863) and has the unit designation across the upper quadrant like the 37th Mississippi flag you have.

One historian thinks that the flag was made with improper battle honors for the 37th Mississippi or the flag was made for some other regiment and their designation was torn off and "37th Mississippi" was sewn on. I also think that when the regiment got the flag from the Mobile Depot they saw that these honors were on the flag and tore them off themselves after a time.

The flag was made by either Jackson and Sarah Belknap or James Cameron of Mobile (Cameron was a transplant from Memphis) who made the flags for the Mobile Depot from October 1863 through July 1864. Some of these flags were marked with unit designations and honors and some were unmarked entirely.

Considering the flag's provenance and Fonda's authentication, it is hard to argue that the flag is not real, which it indeed is. So it comes down to the maker simply goofing when doing the battle honors or the 37th Mississippi taking another flag and adding their own designation to it and removing the honors that were there because they didn't fight in those battles.

Greg Biggs