[MSN] US. Beauvoir curator finds 100-year-old artifact on eBay Old soldiers' flag

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Beauvoir curator finds 100-year-old artifact on eBay Old soldiers' flag
By KAT BERGERON
kbergeron at sunherald.com

BILOXI -- A century-old flag immortalized in a postcard is back home at Beauvoir, the museum estate of Jefferson Davis that once served as an early-20th-century "Old Soldiers Home."

The image shows two veterans displaying a Confederate First National Flag in front of antebellum Beauvoir House, now a National Historic Landmark.

The Beauvoir staff recognized the original flag because it is a variant with 13 stars instead of seven for the first seceded states. The identifying clincher is the 13th sits alone in a circle of stars.

What makes this story poignant, besides the return of missing history, is Beauvoir lost at least 40 percent of its artifacts to Hurricane Katrina, including two flags. Davis' retirement house will reopen in the spring, and the large flag encased in glass will hang in the presidential library when that structure is complete.

The re-acquisition began when Rick Forte Sr. received a tip about a flag for sale on eBay. He is Beauvoir's acting director, chairman of Beauvoir's combined boards of trustees and directors and a military-antiques dealer.

Forte questioned the seller's claim the flag was flown by Davis when he lived at Beauvoir from 1877 until his 1889 death.

"We know he never flew a flag of any kind, because he wasn't a citizen," said Forte. "His citizenship wasn't restored until long after his death."

Research by Beauvoir's curator, Richard Flowers, helped unravel the mystery, beginning with the postcard. They now believe the flag was made for the soldiers' home, possibly by the Mississippi United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1903.

"This is a true Beauvoir artifact, not a Jefferson Davis artifact or a Civil War artifact," said Forte, "and that's what makes its return so important."

In 1904 the flag flew over a replica of Beauvoir at the St. Louis World's Fair; then it was returned until the 1908 Jamestown Exposition. That year UDC flew it in Richmond for the 100th anniversary of Davis' birth, but it was never returned to Beauvoir.

In the 1960s, a Richmond UDC chapter sold it to a Civil War collector, who resold it to a Kentucky collector - the one who listed it on eBay. A Beauvoir supporter donated an undisclosed amount for Forte to buy it for the museum.

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