Savannah, Mo. ? Summer baked Holt County, and a farm wife sat on her front porch making marks on the cardboard back of a State Theater movie bill. 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.

An artist in spirit and a perfectionist by nature, Snider taught herself to make exquisitely decorated wedding cakes. Her embroidery proved so precise it practically brought landscapes to life. She meticulously scrapbooked before it became a crafting fashion.

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

Contest triumph

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

Margaret Salfrank, of Savannah, Mo., repairs one of the 27 flags she uses during flag presentations to groups and schools while at home on June 23. Salfrank believes that her mother, Harriet Snider, designed the 49-star flag that was in use for only a year.

There is a picture of Margaret Snider, a grade-schooler then, in her Sunday finest and her hair in bows. A photographer came to the farm near Mound City, Mo., and snapped a picture of Harriet and her two daughters holding a flag of the mother’s design.

The flag came courtesy of a News-Press contest, one speculating on the addition of a 49th state. President Harry Truman liked Hawaii, had vacationed there and raised the possibility of bringing the islands into the union.

“That’s how the News-Press in 1947 picked that up,” Salfrank said. “Most people hadn’t thought anything about it because the continent was full and had been since 1912. They really didn’t think it would ever happen.”

In fact, 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.

Delayed prize

Then, more than 11 years passed. Later in 1959, her youngest daughter Margaret would marry another Holt Countian named Don Salfrank, but an item on a snowy television newscast caught Snider’s attention.

Margaret Salfrank sews in her workroom in Savannah, Mo., that is lined with photos of her children.

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.

“My mother was watching the 6 o’clock news, and she said, ‘That looks like the design I sent into the contest,'” Salfrank said.

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

Snider, notified by the News-Press nine days later of the winning design, never got the flag that was the contest’s prize. The newspaper published some stories about the long-deferred award, but the 49-star flag became almost solely the stuff of family lore.

(The News-Press made good on the prize in 1996, commissioning a flag company to create a 49-star banner, though six years after Snider’s death.)

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.

Historic path

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

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

Legend holds that George Washington and others went to a Philadelphia seamstress named Betsy Ross in 1776 and asked her to make the first American flag. However, this story gained standing only after her grandson, more than 90 years later, began its circulation.

Margaret Salfrank wanted to follow in the path of that grandson and spread the word of her mother’s design. The family history, she had down cold.

“She was born on Washington’s birthday. There is a glacier in Alaska called Mendenhall, which is her maiden name,” Salfrank said. “She felt that she was destined to be part of Alaska’s history and that her flag design was the one that was chosen.”

So she began researching the history of America’s flags, of which there have been 27 designs in the nation’s 229-year history.

Spreading the word

Statehood drove the most changes in the 19th century, and nine of the flags have flown only one year, with another five just two years. After New Mexico and Arizona joined the union in 1912, the 48-star flag flew longer than any of them (though the 50-star flag will catch up in two years).

Margaret Salfrank began giving presentations to school groups and civic organizations about the American flag, incorporating history, patriotism 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,” Salfrank said. “But she deserves it.”

Around the world

A former assessor in Holt County, Margaret Salfrank and her husband, married 45 years, serve as reservists for Homeland Security’s emergency-management branch, traveling to disaster areas at times to do assessments. Their five children and 13 grandchildren all know the family history.

“We all wave the flag,” she said. “It means a lot to us.”

And she notes that her mother “became a stargazer” during 1959 when the flag of her design represented the nation here and abroad.

“She watched President Eisenhower go all over the world and her flags were flying on his front fenders,” Salfrank said. “He traveled a lot that year, all over the world. She could visualize it in her mind, and she traveled right along with him. It’s like she had been there.”