Confederate flag shown in Augusta

AUGUSTA – A Confederate flag from the Civil War that was brought to Maine by a Union drummer boy has been put on display at the Maine State Museum.

The small handmade flag is the only Confederate flag in the state’s collection of 112 Civil War banners, said museum curator Laurie LaBar. It is important because it is a rare example of a personal “trophy” that was brought home from war, she said.

The flag is a version of the Confederate national flag known as the Stars and Bars. It has three horizontal red and white stripes and a blue field in one corner with 11 white stars in it.

A handwritten note that accompanies the flag says that Daniel Marston, who was 13 and from the western Maine town of Phillips, found it near Fort Clinch in Florida when Union troops took over the island housing the fort in 1862.

Daniel and his father were serving in the 9th Maine Infantry Regiment as a drummer boy and a private. The museum exhibit includes photographs of father and son in uniform.

The Marstons later transferred to the famed 16th Maine Infantry Regiment. After they returned home from war, the flag remained in the family in Maine for generations.

The flag was included last year in an estate auction of Marston family possessions that also contained other Civil War memorabilia. The asking price for the flag was about $10,000, but no one bid high enough to buy it.

Another bidder at that auction, John Thompson of Massachusetts, paid $2,700 for a ceremonial sword that was presented to the elder Marston in 1865.

Thompson, who has roots in Maine and family ties to the 16th Maine Regiment, wanted to keep the Marston collection intact so he told the auction house that he would donate the sword to the museum if the estate did the same with the flag. The estate agreed, and the sword and the flag are now part of the same exhibit.

The flag looks like a “railing hanger” and may have decorated a ship or a small boat, said David Fletcher, a historian with Thomaston Place Auction Galleries, which auctioned the Phillips estate that initially included the flag.

The banner is less valuable than the Maine battle flags in the museum’s collection, but the story of how it was retrieved by a young boy from Maine gives it distinction, LaBar said.

The flag will be on display at the museum, along with related Civil War artifacts, until late August or early September.