34-star Flag
This hand-sewn linen United States flag with thirteen stripes and 34 stars, measuring 85 x 60 inches is said to have been made by Sarah Fanning Bleeker Denison (1812-1898), wife of Rev. Samuel Dexter Denison (1810-1880). The flag only had 34 stars for two years between the addition of Kansas in 1861 and West Virginia in 1863. Those were important years for the flag which previously had been mostly seen on ships and army bases; it was allowed to be carried into battle for the first time. When Union patriotism made it a popular purchase, it was mass manufactured for the first time. This one was definitely not mass produced; the top stripe is made of several pieces as though the maker ran short of fabric. Her arrangement of stars may seem random but until 1912 U.S. law didn’t require any particular pattern.
