Flags of our fathers

“Nine men died carrying that flag,” VanAcker said. “It has bloodstains on it.”

An elderly man who led tours at Gettysburg for decades took off his hat.

“These flags bring out incredible emotion,” VanAcker said.

The historian will give a rare, behindthe-scenes tour of the Michigan Civil War Battle Flag Collection Sunday at the Michigan Historical Center. There are 240 flags in the collection, including 160 from the Civil War and others from the Spanish-American War and World War I.

VanAcker is co-chairman of the Save Our Flags project, which started when the state capitol building was restored in 1990.

The collection includes nationally celebrated battle flags, camp flags and parade flags. Many of them survived dramatic and violent days, including the flag of the 3rd Michigan infantry regiment, Company G, which formed in Lansing.

One of Company G’s color bearers, Charles Foster, was among the first students at Michigan Agricultural College, now MSU, and the first Lansing man to enlist in the Union army. (Foster lived in a house at 317 Chestnut St. that still stands.)

He was also the first Lansing man to die in the war. He volunteered to carry the colors into the battle of Fair Oaks, Va., and was killed while carrying the flag. Eyewitnesses saw Foster shove the staff in the ground as he fell, breathing his last words to the nearest soldier: “Don’t let the flag go down.”

For decades, the collection was kept in the Capitol rotunda, but they gradually deteriorated from exposure to light, air, moisture and dust.

In the 1990s, the flags were taken off their original staves, placed in lowlight storage units with controlled temperature and humidity and wrapped in a “flag sandwich” of acid-free materials.

VanAcker and other historians take them out for special events like Sunday´s tour.

Michigan’s Civil War Battle Flags

2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 26 FREE Michigan Historical Center 717 W. Allegan St., Lansing lansinghistory.org