Description:

This silk national flag is very fragmentary.  Only twenty-three of the original silk embroidered stars remain.  On the fourth red stripe the regimental designation is embroidered in white.  What remains reads “8th Mich-”.  There is a lot of silk loss along all the edges and where the canton attaches.  A detached piece of gold bullion fringe is with the flag but is detached from it.  A series of ties were used to attach the flag to the staff.

The staff, which measures 93” by 1.25” is missing a finial.  The staffs of flags returned to the state at the 1866 Detroit ceremony marking the end of the war all bear identical brass plaques.  The brass plaque reads in Spencerian script “8th Mich. Cavalry”.

In 2006, the flag was conserved by conservators at the American Textile History Museum.  The flag was humidified using a humidification chamber.  The flag was then aligned and allowed to dry with glass weights to remove wrinkles.  The flag was then encapsulated between two layers of Stabiltex fabric.