Homemade Civil War flag shows ravages of battle

CEDAR RAPIDS - American flags fly in abundance this time of year, marking Memorial Day, Flag Day and the Fourth of July. They are 50 stars, 13 stripes and, unfortunately, often made in China.

But 150 years ago, as Civil War soldiers went off for training and then battle, flags to accompany them were not mass-produced. They were often sewn by groups of women, much as Betsy Ross is crediting with creating the first stars and stripes.

So it was in 1861 when women in Marengo gathered to sew together a 34-star flag for the boys from home. The finished flag was presented in 1862 to Company B, 28th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, which proudly carried it into one battle after another.

Today, after a rather circuitous route and decades of storage, this very flag, war-torn, battered, tattered and bloodstained, is displayed in a custom-made wooden case under glass at the Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids.

“All we know is it was done by women from Marengo,” says Bill Kreuger, assistant librarian. “It would be nice to know who did it.”

In the day, no regulations governed the arrangement of the stars, Bill says. Of course, flags had to have 13 stripes to represent the original 13 colonies and 34 stars for the states in the union when war broke out. (President Abraham Lincoln didn't allow any stars to be removed during the war.)

This flag resembles the Betsy Ross flag in that 16 stars are arranged in a circle. Another six stars decorate the interior of the circle, while the remaining 12 stars are grouped in clusters of three in each corner of the blue field. You can look closely at the intricate hand-stitching for each stripe and each star.

The 28th Infantry carried the flag as it mustered into service at Camp Pope in Iowa City in October 1862, then traveled to Davenport and Helena, Ark., for a brutal winter. That spring it joined General Grant's army in the campaign to capture Vicksburg, Miss., seeing action in one of the more important battles, that of Champion Hill on May 16, 1863. The unit suffered 97 casualties, but the flag survived numerous hits by shot and shell. The story goes that the color-bearer, wounded in battle, protected Old Glory by clutching it to his bloodied body, leaving a stain at the top to the right of the blue field.

Soon afterward, James T. Sargent, a master Mason who helped organize the company and became first lieutenant, resigned and returned to Marengo, apparently bringing the flag with him. He later moved to Yankton, in the Dakota Territory, where the flag flew in Memorial Day parades.

After his death, his son William F. Sargent, a past Grand Master of South Dakota, presented the flag to the Oriental Consistory, which stored it in the Masonic Temple at Yankton, S.D. Then, in 2004, it was presented to the Grand Lodge of Iowa by Charles Kaufman, another past Grand Master of South Dakota, who thought it belonged closer to where it had been made.

“You can see there are no grommets on this flag,” Bill says, pointing toward the left side of the cloth. “They basically nailed it to the flagpole.”

The flag is displayed near other Civil War artifacts, including a drum used by Henry C. Thompson of northern Linn County and his 1917 pension certificate (he received $23 a month at the time, to go up to $30 in 1921). But this flag, handmade 150 years ago, is the centerpiece.

“It's just awesome,” Bill says. “Just think of the stories this flag could tell.”