Exhibits Title information is available upon specific request. Additional information available upon request to researchers, writers and others demonstrating special circumstances. In some situations, information may not be available.
Exhibition Copy	Baltimore Star Spangled Banner Flag House 3/2004 31-Star United States Flag Date: 1851-1857 (California was admitted to statehood on September 9, 1850) Media: Wool bunting field and canton with cotton stars, all hand sewn. Size: 113" on the hoist by 222" on the fly. (9.5' by 18.5') Comment: The storm flag does not appear in military post regulations until 1857. At that time, the size was specified at 10" hoist by 20" fly. By 1854 the U.S. Navy provided six sizes of ensigns for the U.S. fleet. Five of these were large ensigns for regular usage. Their sizes (hoist to fly) were: 18.75" by 36"; 16.75" by 32"; 14.5" by 28"; 13" by 25"; and 11.5" by 22". Like the Army, the Navy also provided a Storm Ensign. It measured 8.25" by 16". As in the Army flags, in all of these Navy flags, the canton was to extend through the seventh stripe from the top. While the cantons distance on the fly for Army flags was to be one-third of that dimension, on Navy flags the canton was to extend four-tenths of that distance. On this particular flag, the cantons distance on the fly measures slightly more than one-half the whole dimension of the fly. This would suggest that the flag, while close to the storm flag dimensions for both services is not a military flag. The ten metal rings along its heading, however, clearly indicate that it was to be flown from a halyard on a pole. Provenance: Acquired by the Zaricor Flag Collection in 1995 from H. Madaus of Cody, Wyoming. American Maritime Flags of the 19th Century Ships and coastal installations (both governmental and private) require flags that can be identified from great distances. Recognition was achieved during the nineteenth century by providing these vessels and facilities with flags that were especially large. Exhibited here are several American flags related to such vessels or facilities from the period 1818 to 1893. They are all large bunting flags. Generally speaking, a large flag is one that is too unwieldy to be carried by one person if the flag is attached to a staff meant to be carried by single individual. Until 1854 in the British Army, and until 1895 in the American Army, military colors carried by units on foot were made of silk and measured no more than 6 feet on the staff by 6 feet 6 inches on the fly. Those dimension essentially a flag with an area encompassing slightly more than four square yards of cloth were deemed the maximum size for transport by an individual on a staff. Most of the flags in this exhibit exceed those parameters. Due to their size, large flags such as these are difficult to display and are seldom sought by collectors. Museums often relegate them to perpetual storage. This exhibit is unusual, therefore, in that it displays so many of these flags in one place. This exhibit is sponsored by the Veninga-Zaricor family and Good Earth Teas, Santa Cruz, CA; The Flag Center, Presidio of San Francisco, CA; and the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, Baltimore, MD. Presidential Debate Washington University at St. Louis October 2004 31-Star United States Flag California Admitted (1851-1858) California became the 31st state in 1850 upsetting the delicate balance between free and slave states and signaling an end of The Missouri Compromise of 1820. For nearly forty years politicians in the U.S. Senate had maintained a balance between the number of slave and free states entering the Union in order to maintain parity among opponents and proponents of slavery. Provisions of the Compromise of 1850 ended that system. That compromise allowed California to enter the Union as a free state. While the country now spanned From Sea to Shinning Sea, the gathering storm over slavery threatened to tear the country apart. Striking examples of this can be seen in the flags New England abolitionists created during this period that eliminated the stars for all 15 slave states from the canton, producing unofficial 16-star U.S. flags. These flags are now called exclusionary flags.
Exhibition Images	Washington University 2004 Presidential Debate Poster Baltimore Exhibit, 2004

Title information is available upon specific request. Additional information available upon request to researchers, writers and others demonstrating special circumstances. In some situations, information may not be available.