Flag: 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment (Co. D, Canebrake Rifle Guards)
Catalogue No. 86.2677.1
(PN10165-10167 Obverse)
(PN10168-10170 Reverse)
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Provenance Reconstruction:

This flag may have been manufactured between February 21 and November 17, 1860 by J. O. Belknap, 28 Dauphin St., Mobile, Alabama.¹ It was issued to the company prior to their departure for Virginia and was last carried during a dress parade at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in June 1861. No subsequent information concerning the history of the flag has been located.

The flag was received by the Alabama Department of Archives and History between August 2, 1956 and February 4, 1957. It was presented by Miss Bertha Mann of Montgomery, Alabama to whom it was sent by Mrs. Edith Searcy of Boaz, Alabama. The flag had been sent from the effects of an elderly cousin, Miss Minnie Elizabeth Smith of Cane Spring, Georgia who died in June 1956. She was the daughter of Robert N. Smith who enlisted on April 25, 1861 in Co. D, 4th Alabama Infantry. His association with the flag remains unclear.

Sources:
Curator's Object Files, Civil War Flags, Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Tancig, W. J. Confederate Military Land Units, 1861-1865. New York, Thomas Yoseloff, 1967.

¹The Canebrake Rifle Guards were incorporated on February 21, 1860. An advertisement placed by Belknap in the Montgomery Mail, November 17, 1860 noted that an order for the flag of the Canebrake Rifle Guards had recently been "executed". However evidence also suggests that it was painted by Nicola Marschall of Marion, Alabama.