STARKVILLE – A United States flag, once rumored to have draped Ulysses S. Grant’s coffin, is now the subject of research in the U.S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University.
Donated to the library Thursday by Renasant Bank’s main branch in Starkville, the flag brings with it a century of legends, from Grant carrying it into battle to its being on display in a hotel lobby in Natchez.
“Along the way, its legend kind of grows,” said Ryan Semmes, director of research at the Grant Library. “It went from a funeral flag to the flag he carried in battle during the war. … It has a legend that’s established with it, some of which is probably true and some of which is just completely not true. But how did that legend evolve over the years?”
Using old newspapers articles, auction catalogs and genealogical research, that’s exactly what researchers are trying to determine. While some claims – like the flag bearing bullet holes from active combat – are easily disproved, others are more concrete.
The flag’s documentation shows it belonged to a woman named Mary Pinkerton Thompson, husband to a Sgt. H. Pinkerton and a supposed cousin of a different president, Semmes said.
“Now Mrs. Thompson claims … that she was cousins with Abraham Lincoln, and that as a young girl she would stay at the White House and play with the president and his children and things like that,” Semmes said.
Over the years, Thompson ended up with the flag as well as a sword and epaulets, all of which she claimed belonged to Grant. The collection was passed down to her son, L.O. Thompson, and auctioned off in 1954. For the next 45 years, aside from another possible auction, relatively little is known about the flag’s whereabouts, Semmes said.
But in 1999, it was up for auction again in Atlanta. Bob Dean, then owner of the Eola Hotel in Natchez, bought the flag with plans to display it in the hotel lobby. Finally in Mississippi, the flag was purported to have been the one carried by Grant during the Civil War. It was also supposedly draped over his coffin after his death in 1885.
Neither of those is true, Semmes said. For one, as a commander, Grant wouldn’t have carried any flags into combat, he said. Secondly, the flag bears 38 stars, which didn’t become the standard canton design until 1877, more than 10 years after the end of the war.
As for whether the flag was draped over Grant’s coffin, Semmes highly doubts it. Based on photos from his funeral procession, it’s unlikely a flag was ever laid across the coffin, which was elevated on a catafalque, he said. But the claim that the flag was a part of his funeral procession may not be far from the truth.
Flags lined the streets of New York for seven miles that day, Semmes said.
“I can’t say with 100% certainty, but that’s what I believe,” Miskelly said. “I believe that it’s probably one of many flags of the United States of America in 1885 that were along the route from his funeral.”
A symbol of dedication
In July, the flag went up for auction again in Aberdeen. Rocky Miskelly, president of wealth management at Renasant and a member of the U.S. Grant Association, saw it and immediately thought it would make a great addition to the library.
“I heard about the flag, and I was, as they say, a day late and a dollar short,” Miskelly told The Dispatch. “I thought the auction was on a Monday, and it was on a Saturday. So on Sunday, I called the auction company … and I was told that the flag had been sold.”
Fortunately, the original buyer fell through, so Miskelly approached the Renasant executive management team about buying the flag and donating it to the Grant Library.
Aside from telling the library staff, Miskelly said the team chose to keep the flag a secret the past few months, surprising MSU President Mark Keenum with the gift on Thursday.
Miskelly, a self-proclaimed amateur Grant scholar and enthusiast, called the flag a symbol of Grant’s dedication to the country.
“Grant believed in the Constitution, and he believed in the union. The flag symbolizes that,” he said. “Nothing is more a symbol of the union of states that is the United States than this flag.”
The flag’s significance is clear both in the stories that surround it as well as its condition, Miskelly said. After Grant’s funeral procession ended in 1885, people grabbed flags as souvenirs. Several stars from the top row of the flag are cut out and given away for the same reason, he believes.
“I believe those stars were snipped out … and given to family members or friends as souvenirs,” he said. “That means very early on in that flag’s history, someone was venerating the flag as significantly present at Grant’s funeral.”
As for exactly how the flag made it from New York City to Natchez and now to Starkville, Semmes said there are still several mysteries to solve.
“We’re going to do our best to contextualize the artifact as much as we can, but as we learn more things about it, then we’ll make those additions and changes to the exhibit to make sure everything that we have out there is the most up to date and accurate,” he said.
The way Miskelly sees it, the flag’s story is exactly what makes it so fascinating.
“Even if it had been Julia Grant’s flag, and she had put it on his coffin, saved it for 150 years in family and then donated it to the library, this flag still has a more interesting story,” he said.
The flag has been stuck between two “archivally unsound” pieces of plexiglass for years and is not on public display, Anne Marshall, the Grant Library’s executive director, told The Dispatch. The library plans to restore the flag and display it in the next few months.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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