Time and a 1940s foot locker have been kind to the 45-star, American flag that once flew from the topmast of the Wiscasset sloop Fanny F.

Commercial scow captain Asa Willard “Will” Plumstead's wife, Maria Antoinette “Nettie” McCarty Plumstead, sewed the flag in 1896, according to “Wiscasset and its Times” author Phil DiVece.

Following the flag's life on the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers, with the wind-powered sloop that carried lumber, bricks and other goods, the captain's family kept the flag at a Birch Point, Wiscasset, farmhouse until the 1940s or so, recalled the Plumsteads' granddaughter, Bee King, 89, of East Boothbay.

On patriotic occasions, the 15 by 9-foot flag was put out to hang over the home's front door, King said.

Eventually, she had it at home with her in Wiscasset and, beginning nine years ago, in Boothbay, still in the box she believes her aunt, longtime Wiscasset schoolteacher Frances Plumstead, the sloop's namesake, put it in.

“I would take (the flag) out now and then and shake it out, and just make sure the mice hadn't gotten it,” King said.

On October 28, King returned to Wiscasset to donate the flag to the Lincoln County Historical Association.

Still in tact, the big flag billowed in a raw breeze as King, DiVece and the historical association's president, Ed Kavanah, held it unfurled on the back deck of DiVece's Langdon Road home.

“I'll bet you this was quite a sight,” DiVece said about the flag's days on the sloop.

The flag's 45th star was for Utah, which became a state in January 1896, DiVece said.

“We're thrilled,” Kavanagh said of King's donation. The association will likely display the flag each year on July 4, Veteran's Day and possibly at other times, he said.

The displays will probably be inside a building the association owns, like the 1811 Old Jail on Wiscasset's Federal Street or at the 1761 Pownalborough Courthouse in Dresden, to protect the flag from sunlight and the weather, Kavanagh said.

Its next viewing was planned for that night at the historical association's board meeting, to be held at a local landmark, Coastal Enterprises' Haggett Garage building, Kavanagh said.

Captain Plumstead died before his granddaughter, King, was born. His daughter Frances, who he named the 1896 sloop for, and Plumstead's widow Nettie brought up King.

King's mother died when she was born.

King recalled her grandmother, the flag's maker, as the salt of the earth.

“She did everything,” King said, coffee in hand, in DiVece's kitchen. “She raised six children of her own, and then she raised me.

“She made me clothes out of grain bags.”

What would her grandmother and aunt have thought about King's decision to donate the flag? “They probably would have said, 'Why didn't you do it 30, 50 years ago,'” she said.

“I'm proud to give it,” King said.

DiVece learned about the flag while doing research for a second volume to “Wiscasset and its Times.” King had heard about the project and offered him the use of her grandfather’s journals.

The journals show Asa Plumstead went into many lines of work to support his family, DiVece said. Besides his shipping operation, he cut and sold hay, made leather harnesses for horse and oxen teams and, in 1904, became a mail carrier in Wiscasset when home delivery first began, DiVece said.

“He truly was a jack of all trades,” the author said. The Plumsteads are an example of Wiscasset's hard-working families at the turn of the 20th century, he said.

King and others at Monday's presentation were uncertain what fabric the flag from the Fanny F. was made of, but it appeared to be muslin, DiVece's wife Marjorie DiVece said. She and King go back about 30 years, when they met through a local chapter of the social and service sorority Beta Sigma Phi.

The foot locker that housed the flag also held a couple of scraps that appeared to match the flag's colors and material. They may have been intended as replacement pieces if needed, Marjorie DiVece said.

“In those days they didn't throw away a thing,” King said.