DESIGNER OF THE CONFEDERATE FLAG AND UNIFORM, NICOLA MARSCHALL

The “Stars and Bars” is a symbol that many history lovers are familiar with. The first flag of the Confederate States of America was a unifying standard for the newly formed, and short lived new “country”. Although most will recognize it, few folks know who designed it, and some will be shocked to learn that he was an immigrant. 

Nicola Marschall, “The Artist of the Confederacy”, was born in 1829, in modern day Germany. In 1849, he immigrated to Mobile, Alabama to live with family members and to study art. Just two years later, he was faculty at Marion Female Seminary in Alabama, where he taught art, music, and languages. Later, he went back to Germany, then moved to France, and then Italy to further his education on art. By 1859, he returned to Alabama. He was taught by some of the best that Europe had to offer to master his craft.

In February 1861, he was approached by a family member of the Alabama Governor to design a flag for the Southern states that had begun to secede from the Union of the United States. By March, his design was selected, over numerous others, and flew over the Alabama Capitol Building, a month before the Civil War began. He not only designed the iconic flag, but he also designed the well-known grey uniforms worn by the Confederate troops, which he based on those he had seen of the Austrian Army in Europe.

A year later, in April 1862, Marschall enlisted in the Confederate Army, surprisingly as a Private. By January 1864, we elevated to a Lieutenant in the 2nd Alabama Regiment of Engineers, where he helped to draw plans for bridges, forts and other important military structures. After the war he married, but he couldn’t find stable work to support his new family as an artist in the reconstruction economy of the south. He traveled all over the southern states looking for work and by 1873, had ended up in Louisville, Kentucky.

He was an amazing painter, and earned commissions to paint the portraits of scores of well-known people of the time such as, Napoleon Bonaparte, Otto Von Bismarck, Nathan Bedford Forrest, President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis, and…. President of the United States Abraham Lincoln, as well as many others. Nicola Marschall died in 1917, at 87-years-old, and is buried in the beautiful Cave Hill Cemetery, in Louisville, Kentucky. 

In 1931, a marble tablet was dedicated in the rotunda of the Alabama State Capitol Building, in Montgomery, commemorating the raising of the first Confederate flag. It states: “From the dome of this building, the first Capital, floated the first flag of the confederacy, known as the Stars and Bars, designed by Nicola Marschall, of Marion, Alabama, at the suggestion of Mrs. Napoleon Lockett, of the place, adopted by the Confederate Congress, March 4, 1861, and raised that day by Miss Letitia Tyler, Grand-daughter of former United States President John Tyler.”. The event had a parade of cadets from the Marion Military Institute, where a band played “Dixie”, and the event was attended by Nicola Marschall’s two daughters, and descendants of Mrs. Summer Lea, whose silk dress furnished the materials for the first Stars and Bars. 

Be sure to see our video form Nicola Marscall’s grave at the link below.

– Col. Russ Carson, Jr, Founder, Family Tree Nuts