Nicola Marschall
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Nicola Marschall (1829–1917) was a German-American artist who supported the Confederate cause during the American Civil War. He designed the original Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars, as well as the official grey uniform of the Confederate army.
He was born in St. Wendel, Germany in 1829 to a wealthy Prussian family of tobacco merchants. He emigrated to the United States in 1849 through New Orleans, Louisiana, headed for Mobile, Alabama. From Mobile he went to Marion, Alabama, where he began teaching art first at his portrait studio, and then at the Marion Female Seminary in 1851. He briefly returned to Germany to further his art technique.
The wife of Napoleon Lockett requested Marschall to take part in the competition to create the new flag destined to represent the Confederate States of America. Marschall's design became the first Confederate flag, with one of its first appearances at the Ben Johnson House in Bardstown, Kentucky. During the war he was briefly in the Second Regiment of Confederate Engineer Troops, under Samuel Lockett. After the War he returned to Marion.
During his career he painted portraits of Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, and various individuals who were Presidents or Confederates. He was one of the few who was able to have Nathan Bedford Forrest pose for him. He would sign and date his portraits while the paint was still wet at the bottom-right of the portrait, using a steel pen.
Due to the economic depression in the South following the War, he returned to Mobile in 1872. In 1873 he moved to Louisville, Kentucky, as his friends told him it would be an easier place to gain commissions to do portraits. At the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, he won a medal for his portraits.
In 1908 he gave up working on portraits. He later died in Louisville in 1917, where he was interred in Cave Hill Cemetery.
 Nicola Marschall grave at Cave Hill Cemetery |
 "Artist of Confederacy": Historical marker at Cave Hill Cemetery about Marschall |
