Short run of the 49: Daughter honors legacy of flag designed by mother

SAVANNAH, Mo. -- Summer baked Holt County, and a farm wife sat on her front porch making marks on cardboard. Margaret Salfrank remembers her mother at work.

"My sister and I would walk up and see what she was doing, and we'd call it her doodling," she said.

The woman excused the curiosity of her daughters, then 7 and 8, but continued making X's in various patterns, 49 in each cluster. The year 1947 brought America post-war relief, the heat notwithstanding, yet Harriet Mendenhall Snider stuck to her chore.

On this day, the farm wife designed something that would become a passion for her daughter, a 49-star American flag.

Salfrank, of Savannah, Mo., discusses it still. In doing so, she honors her mother and the flag in the same motion.

There is a picture of Margaret Snider, a grade-schooler then. A News-Press photographer came to the farm near Mound City, Mo., and snapped a picture of Harriet and her daughters holding a flag of the mother's design.

The flag came courtesy of a newspaper contest, one speculating on the addition of a 49th state. President Harry Truman had raised the possibility of bringing Hawaii into the union.

But the country proved unprepared under Truman for a new state. There was no need for a 49th star. The photographer took the flag when he returned to St. Joseph, and the family had but a published picture to remember the contest triumph.

Then, in 1959, an item on television caught Snider's attention.

On Jan. 3, 1959, Alaska became the 49th state. At the White House ceremony, President Dwight Eisenhower displayed a new American flag, with its arrangement of seven staggered rows of seven stars each.

"She said, 'That looks like the design I sent into the contest,"' Margaret Salfrank said.

By the time the 10 p.m. news came on, her mother had retrieved a scrapbook showing her original drawings. "Sure enough," the daughter said, "it was her design."

Hawaii joined the United States in 1960, the 50th state, and the 49-star flag flew just one year. The story might end with the Eisenhower years but for Margaret Salfrank's desire to see her mother recognized.

In sorting through family possessions after Snider's death, her daughter turned through the pages of a scrapbook. There, in her mother's handwriting were thoughts on the flag design.

"Like Betsy Ross, I want to know, did I design an American flag?" read the reflections.

The story of Betsy Ross making the first American flag only gained standing after her grandson, more than 90 years later, began its circulation. Margaret Salfrank wanted to follow in the path of that grandson.

She began giving presentations to school groups and civic organizations about the American flag, incorporating history and her mother's design.

"She would be so excited that I have done this and a little embarrassed for making her the center of attention," the daughter said. "But she deserves it."