[A 9-inch by 6-inch replica of the Confederate national flag (not the battle flag), with two horizontal red bars and a white bar in between. The blue square is in the upper left corner should have included a circle of either seven or 11 stars. Provided by Michael Nighan]
— Michael J. Nighan
On a wall of the Penelope Barker House Welcome Center in Edenton, North Carolina hangs a small, faded Confederate flag. Hand-sewn during the Civil War by a young lady of the town, it’s not an unusual item to see on display in one of the eleven states that made up the Confederacy. What is unusual is that it took 157 years, and a round trip of over a thousand miles, for the flag to wind up on that wall. Because this particular “Stars and Bars” flag has been hidden away, not in some sultry Carolina home, but in the snows and cold of Upstate New York, in a trunk in my mother’s family attic. A trophy of war “captured” by my great-grandfather, Ira Nelson Deyo.
By all accounts, Ira was a feisty little guy, an inch or two shorter than average. Born in 1844 and raised in Naples — a town settled by his mother’s New England Yankee family — in 1861 he heeded Abraham Lincoln’s call for soldiers to fight for the Union, enlisting in the 85th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment just weeks after his 17th birthday. By 1862 he’d fought in several battles in Virginia, been promoted to corporal, and been shipped off to North Carolina when his regiment was made part of an amphibious invasion of that state.
Union Army Corporal Ira Nelson Deyo 85th N.Y. Volunteer fought at the Siege of Yorktown (April 5 to May 4, 1862) Jame’s Gibson’s photograph shows one of the Federal mortar batteries near Yorktown. McClellan had 150 of these huge mortars in place, but the Rebels withdrew before they fired a shot. From The Golden Book of the Civil War (1970) [David Kramer’s collection]

Union Army Corporal Ira Nelson Deyo 85th N.Y. Volunteer fought at the Battle of Fair Oaks on May 31st, 1862. Alfred R. Waud’s drawing shows the grisly aftermath of war: burying dead horses after the Battle of Fair Oaks. From The American Heritage Pictorial History of the Civil War (1960) [David Kramer’s collection]

Union Army Corporal Ira Nelson Deyo 85th N.Y. Volunteer fought at the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1st, 1962, Golden Book [David Kramer’s collection] See Bitten by the Civil War bug at the Tinker Homestead Encampment]
In the fall of 1863, on one of these expeditions across Albemarle Sound, Ira marched into the small town of Edenton where he came into possession of a Confederate flag. I’d like to say that he captured it in a fierce battle, amongst shot and shell. But the truth is that the small flag, just 9 X 6 inches, was more of a souvenir, an unfinished sewing project acquired from a young lady in Edenton. Ira later mailed the flag to his mother, commenting that it was, “made by the hands of a secesh lady” who, “forgot to put the stars on”.

Deyo’s letter to his mother [Provided by Michael Nighan]

(top) 1862 map of Union operations in North Carolina; (bottom) Lieutenant Cushing blows up the Albemarle. (The illustration gives the ship too many guns and smokestacks.) from The Confederate Navy: A Pictorial History (1962) by Philip Van Doren Stern [David Kramer’s collection]

(left) Nearly 32,000 Union prisoners were held in the 26-acre stockade in Andersonville, Georgia. “In April 1864, Deyo became a prisoner of war and was confined at Andersonville. After the war, Deyo made several trips to the South, going over the old battle grounds, the last being to witness the unveiling of the New York State monument at Andersonville in the latter part of April, 1914. In Andersonville prison, Deyo spent four months and nearly starved to death. On Deyo’s last trip, he erected a suitably inscribed slab on the spot where he spent the four months.” (findagrave.com) Nighan writes, “The line from Find-a-Grave and other sources about the marker Deyo put up at Andersonville is correct but not the whole story. About an hour after he’d erected the marker, Deyo was told by the authorities to take it down and to get off the property.” Golden Book [David Kramer’s collection] From Bitten by the Civil War bug at the Tinker Homestead Encampment]; (right) Head of one of the canes Deyo made while in the Andersonville stockade.

Deyo’s Andersonville medal given by the State of NY, along with every other NY prisoner at Andersonville who was present for the state monument unveiling in 1914. [Provided by Michael Nighan]

1/26/1917 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle IRA N DEYO. Former Naples Man Dies in Rochester, Buried in Naples
Over the years, Ira made several trips back south to visit Plymouth and the sites of his captivity. At Andersonville, with the help of several locals, he tore down the gate post of the main entrance, a post he had carved into a set of five canes. Back home he wrote letters for the newspapers detailing his trips and, like all good Nineteenth Century Republican politicians, he gave more than a few speeches about the war. But in all his writings and all his speeches there’s not a single word about the Edenton flag.
Had he forgotten about it? It seems unlikely. But I have to wonder why he never wrote about it. Or why none of his children apparently knew about it. In any event, for decades it lay undisturbed at the bottom of a trunk full of old clothes and assorted bits and pieces.¹ Ira’s sister kept the trunk until the 1970s when, after she handed it over to my mother, we were surprised to find a box containing a small Confederate flag made of silk and fringed in yellowing thread. We had no idea what it was until a small piece of paper fell out, upon which Ira had long-ago written,
“This small flag I took – with the permission of a young lady – from a house in Edenton N.C.”
Mom gave me the flag and I packed it away for another few decades. Finally, a couple of years ago, looking over the flag, it suddenly struck me that it was long past time to send the flag back to where it belonged. Contacting the Edenton Historical Commission I presented them with both the flag and the mystery of the unknown “young lady.” ²Now, following two years of bureaucratic inertia and Covid-related delays, Ira’s flag is on display for residents and tourists alike at the town’s welcome center.
SEE “Small flag comes back home” Jonathan Tobias, 4/18/21, The Daily Advance (Elizabeth City, North Carolina)
So 157 years after the small flag left Edenton, it’s finally made its way home. A symbol of what I like to believe was a civilized, if brief, encounter in the middle of America’s most terrible war between my great-grandfather, the Union soldier, and the unknown young “secesh lady.” I hope they’re both happy that it’s back.

Deyo Family Plot: Corp Ira Nelson Deyo BIRTH 3 Aug 1844, Naples, NY DEATH 23 Jan 1917 (aged 72) Rochester, NY BURIAL Rose Ridge Cemetery, Naples, NY (findagrave)
NOTES
¹ In retrospect, one possible reason for Ira’s disinclination to write or talk about his Confederate flag may have been in the interest of family harmony. After all, although three of his brothers also fought for the Union, his first cousin, Simeon Brunson Lyon, moved south and joined the Confederate army (!), returning home to Naples after the war. Were I Ira, the first time I ran into my cousin after my release from Andersonville, I would have knocked his block off. But perhaps tranquility between the Deyo and Lyon families was more important than well-deserved retribution or waving around his captured rebel flag. In any event, they both ended up buried in Rose Ridge Cemetery in Naples. [For more on Simeon Brunson Lyon, see A Small Flag at the Bottom of the Trunk and Confederate soldiers buried in Batavia, Pittsford and Spencerport POSTSCRIPT II]

Simeon Brunson Lyon BIRTH: 1835 New York DEATH: 1885 (aged 49–50) Naples, Ontario County, NY BURIAL: Rose Ridge Cemetery, Naples, Ontario County, NY (FindaGrave) From A Small Flag at the Bottom of the Trunk and Confederate soldiers buried in Batavia, Pittsford and Spencerport POSTSCRIPT II
² In a distantly-related episode, in 1887 President Cleveland proposed returning to the southern states, Confederate battle flags captured by federal troops. Opposition by Union veterans put a stop to the plan. In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt finally ordered the return of all such flags in the possession of the federal government. Over the following years, many northern states did the same. I followed suit in 2019.
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Bitten by the Civil War bug at the Tinker Homestead Encampment