Image: Edward H. Williams Flag

Description: A homemade American flag with red, white, and blue stripes, a white canton with 13 red stars. It was made in Utah in the 1850s.

"Made between late 1850 and early 1851, this flag was constructed like a patchwork quilt. Edward H. Williams, a tailor, and Eliza Benson, a milliner, left Great Salt Lake City in December of 1850 as part of the George A. Smith party traveling to settle near what is now Parowan, Utah. Williams and Benson gathered scraps of cloth form members of the party to make a flag. They died the cloth using vegetable dies and sewed the pieces together in the evenings to produce a red, white and blue Stars and Stripes flag measuring about twenty-one by forty-four inches. When Williams moved north to Salt Creek, near present day Nephi, he took the flag with him. There it was used by the local militia and in parades during the last half of the 19th Century.

Around 1950 it was borrowed for display and washed as it was thought dusty and dirty. Much of the color washed out or migrated to the fly end of the flag when it was hung by the hoist to dry. It has since been mounted in a frame and is on display in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers' Museum in Nephi, Utah." -(https://www.loeser.us/flags/utah.html)
Usage Terms: Public domain