Tattered by time and damaged by fire, a historic American flag came home more than 180 years after it was captured by British troops in the War of 1812.
Officials at Old Fort Niagara north of Buffalo, where the flag once flew, tracked it down at a Scottish castle and bought it from a descendant of Sir Gordon Drummond, the British general who took it there as a war trophy."We're frightfully proud of it, but we thought it ought to come back here," said Baroness Strange, Drummond's great-great-grand-niece, who accompanied Fort Niagara officials bringing the flag back Wednesday.
"Lord Drummond would have been very pleased. He would have thought this was the right place for it," said the baroness, who sold the flag for about $150,000.
The flag measures about 13 feet by 15 feet and has 14 stars and 13 stripes. It could date to the 1790s and may be one of the oldest U.S. flags in existence, said Bob Rieger, who heads the Old Fort Niagara Association.
The fort, now a historic site, plans to spend a year doing conservation work on the flag before putting it on display.
A color guard dressed as soldiers from the 1812 war greeted fort officials, who carried the flag in a 9-foot-long metal tube painted red, white and blue at the Buffalo airport in suburban Cheektowaga.
British troops captured the fort Dec. 19, 1813, during a raid to retaliate for a U.S. foray into nearby Canada. The British held the fort until the war ended in 1815.