The 49th Regiment, of today, evolved out of the Grand Army of the Republic. The group will also be taking a battle flag, that has been located at Nelson Pioneer Farm, to have it cleaned and preserved. Lamb also works as a conservator at the State Historical Museum, where he will start work on documenting the flag.

“It looks like a homemade [flag], which is not unusual.” Lamb said after briefly looking at the flag. The flag appears to date from 1861. It wasn’t until later in the war, around 1862, that the Federal Government issued flags. Early flags had the stars painted on them “[With] the early flags all the stars were silver, but when they got out in the field- the heat, the sun, the rain, the humidity- the stars tarnished and the stars became black; so that’s when they changed to gold stars.” Lamb explained of some history of flags during that period.

Members of the 49th - Color Sgt Richard Grimm, Regimental Color Sgt Michael Rawley and Commander David Lamb at the end of the ceremony for Cyrus West

“This one looks to be hand stitched with hand stitched stars on it, so I would suspect some community probably got together and made this flag and gave it to the boys from their community that marched off as part of the 13th Iowa or the 31st.” Lamb said about this flag and how many of them were presented to young men who marched off to war.

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