First National Flag, CSA
Carried off in 1862, Rutherford County’s first national flag of the Confederacy was finally returned in 1940. Another was returned in 1948. Only one remains.
Following secession in 1861, Rutherford County’s courthouse flew the “Stars and Bars,” the national flag of the Confederate States of America. This silk banner has three wide horizontal bars. The top and bottom bars are red; the middle bar is white. A field of blue in the upper left corner displays a circle of seven silver stars with an eighth in the middle.
The original design of the Confederate national flag had only the circle of seven stars representing the original seven states of the Confederacy. Virginia seceded shortly after the design was approved by the Confederate Congress and the eighth star was added. Although there were eventually eleven Confederate states, no more stars were added to the national flag.
When Rutherford County was first occupied in early 1862, according to family lore, a Union chaplain, Rev. Joseph C. Thomas, saw the Confederate flag flying over the courthouse and “took it with his own hands.” After the war, he took the flag to his home in New York. The Thomas family kept and “treasured” the flag for seventy-five years. When Rev. Thomas died, the flag passed to his nephew Mason B. Thomas.
In 1940, Mrs. M. B. Thomas of Crawfordsville, Indiana, widow of Mason B. Thomas, contacted B. B. Pennington, pastor of the First Methodist Church in Murfreesboro, and asked for his assistance in returning the flag. The old flag was eventually delivered to Rev. Pennington with a request that it be kept “as a treasured historical relic of a day that has passed.”
At the annual Confederate memorial exercises at Evergreen Cemetery on May 25, 1940, Rev. Pennington, on behalf of the Thomas family, presented the flag to the community. The ceremonies were opened with the call to the colors by the Crichlow Grammar School Drum and Bugle Corps. The Central High School band then played a medley of patriotic tunes and “southern airs,” according to news reports.
The opening address by Mrs. E. C. Holloway, president of the local United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), was directed to Samuel H. Mitchell and Frank Ross, the last surviving Confederate veterans in Rutherford County. The two elderly veterans saluted the old flag and then accepted the banner from Rev. Pennington on behalf of the community. (Mitchell died in 1941; Ross died in 1943, the last survivor.)
In his remarks, Rev. Pennington compared “the present war-conscious days with those of 1860.” On May 26, 1940, The Daily News Journal reported “seventy-five children marched around the Confederate Circle scattering flowers over the graves of the Civil War dead…as the band played the Star-Spangled Banner and taps was sounded by the bugle corps,” to conclude the ceremonies.
The UDC was given custody of the old “Stars and Bars” until arrangements could be made for appropriate display and preservation. The war years intervened, however, and it was not until 1950 that the flag was placed in a display case mounted in the courthouse. Mrs. C. F. Partee and Mrs. P. B. Hill, UDC officers, worked with County Judge Hoyte Stewart to complete the display.
In the meantime, a second “Stars and Bars” came home, almost. In February 1948, Tennessee Governor Jim McCord acknowledged receipt of a Confederate national flag from the family of Union Lieutenant Colonel James J. Seibert. With the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Seibert reportedly captured the flag at the Battle of Stones River.
According to family lore, Seibert took the flag to his home in Pennsylvania and gave it to his mother, Mrs. James M. Seibert, who passed it to her
James Daniel Richardson (March 10, 1843 – July 24, 1914) was an American politician and a Democrat from Tennessee for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1885 through 1905. (Wikipedia)
sister, Mrs. J. E. Thomes, in Kansas City. A former Murfreesboro lawyer, James D. Richardson, Jr., learned of the flag’s existence when it was passed to a daughter, Helen Thomes. Richardson persuaded the family to return the flag to Tennessee.
The Seibert flag is initially described in media reports, consistent with Governor McCord’s acknowledgment, as a “blood-stained banner…which once waved above the battlements of Stones River… (and was) captured at the great battle here.” When the story of the flag became known, Murfreesboro Mayor John Holloway requested that the flag be given to Murfreesboro “for display in the city hall or our new public library.” See Nashville Tennessean (2/22/48).
Unfortunately, in some later news reports the separate stories of the flags are confused and the flag displayed in the courthouse becomes identified as the Siebert flag. As can be best determined from a limited and confused record, the Seibert flag actually went to the state museum and was never seen in Rutherford County.
The flag that was saluted by the old veterans in 1940 remained in the courthouse for several decades. It is referenced in a 1962 letter found in the state museum file. “In the Rutherford County Court House, there is displayed a ‘Stars & Bars’… of unknown origin.” The museum’s lack of knowledge in 1962 indicates that it was not the banner delivered to the governor in 1948.
Rutherford’s original “Stars and Bars” was moved to the Oaklands museum in the 1970’s and remained in the county until 1985. In that year the UDC recognized that the old banner was rapidly deteriorating and determined that it should be donated to the state museum for preservation. Documentation in the museum file confirms that the flag was personally delivered to the museum by UDC member Mrs. Buford Johnson in May 1985.
Today the Tennessee State Museum has one “Stars and Bars” that is identified as the Seibert-captured flag that was “on loan from the State for display to the Murfreesboro Courthouse.” See Adelson letter to Tennessee Division UDC (1/5/2010). There is, however, no documentation of any such loan.
As of the 1985 delivery, both the Seibert and the Thomas flags were in the museum collection, according to records in the state archives and museum files. Why only one exists today may be explained by a short memorandum from the museum file dated February 17, 1999. This memo states that the flag received by the governor in 1948 “is currently a part of our collection which was lost within the museum due to a flood in the early 1990’s. At this time it was separated from its accession number and any provenance we had on this flag was lost.”
A special thanks to Margie Weatherford and Candace Adelson for research assistance.
County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at [email protected].