Mr. Biggs,
Without detailing all the sources used in my recently rewritten monograph on the 10th VA's TWO Virginia flags, I will provide just a few.

"Hd Qrs 10th Va Regt Infantry
March 29th 1864
Gen S. Cooper
A & I Genl
I have the honor to recomend for promotion to Ensign for this regiment Sergt Gabriel Shank of Co G. At the commencement of this war Sergt Shank was a consistent member of the Mennonite Church in Rockingham County Virginia and was informed by the officers of the church that he would not be permitted to retain his membership in the church if he volunteered in the army. He gave up his church, volunteered & became a member of the Presbyterian Church. Soon after the first battle of Manassas he was at his own request appointed Color-bearer of his regiment and has carried them in every action in which the regiment has been engaged with a gallantry unsurpassed by any. He has been twice wounded first at Cedar Mountain and then at Chancellorsville. at the latter place finding that he was about to be captured he striped the Colors from the Staff and concealed them by placing them between two of his comrades one of whom was dead & the other wounded. His first flag was litterally shot to pieces. He is as brave a man as there is in the army and richly deserves promotion.
I am most Respectfully Your Obedt Servt
E. T. H. Warren
Col. 10th Va Infantry"
[National Archives Compiled Service Record - Gabriel Shank]

On 4 September 1862, Sergeant George C. Hamman, Company F, wrote in his diary: "[We] . . . are now 2 miles north of Leesburg. Quite a pretty place, and what makes it more so is the pretty ladies. Ladies admired our Virginia flag and the way it was shot to pieces."

On 5 September, Jedediah Hotchkiss made the following entry in his diary: "The 10th Va. Regt. of Infantry, preceded by a band and bearing a Virginia Flag, was in the advance. . ." of the crossing at White's Ford into Maryland.
He elaborated in a letter written to his wife on 8 September: "the 10th Regiment was in the advance (only a small cavalry escort of Marylanders being in front) -- with the Virginia Flag proudly streaming out in a gentle breeze and under an unclouded sun, and then followed other regiments and there were 3 confederate flags and the Virginia one in the river at once. . ."

Gabriel Shank, in a letter to his wife written on 22 May 1863, explained to her how the Virginia flag was not captured at Chancellorsville: "I was also very glad to learn that the old flag was not captured by the enemy, as it is very much timeworn and bears many marks of the desperate conflict through which it has been carried. Almost everyone wonders how it happened that the Yankies didnot get it when they got me. I will here tell you how I managed to save it when I found that there was a very strong probability that we would be captured. I took down the flag and folded it in as close around the staff as I could and threw it down hard by a wounded man and as I intended it wasn't observed by the Yankies who were not allowed to stay but a few moments at the breastworks where we were captured." [As an aside, in the only documented case of the regiment carrying both their Virginia and Confederate battleflags, the Confederate flag was captured by the 68th PA Infantry.]

Shank made a post-Gettysburg reference to the Virginia flag in a letter to his wife on 30 August: ". . .yesterday whilst our regt. was being inspected by the Brigade inspector, Gen. Ewell and his wife rode through our camp and also out to the regt. and stopped to inspect and look at the men. They also took a good look at the flag. They both were very much pleased with the appearance of our camp and of the condition of the guns, and they appeared to admire the old Flag very much. The Gen. made many inquires in regard to it - he wanted to know who had carried it at the time it got the holes shot through it. And also how many Color bearers we had lost. It afforded me great pleasure to answer the questions of the venerable old Gen. and his affectionate looking companion."

This flag which Shank carried from McDowell (May 1862) through Bartlett's Mill (November 1863) was, as Colonel Warren noted, "litterally shot to pieces" and retired in early 1864. The second Virginia flag was carried by Shank from just after Spotsylvania Court House until Fisher's Hill (September 1864) when Shank, recognizing he was to be captured, left it in the hands of a local farmer. Shank was indeed captured and died on 18 March 1865; two months before the birth of his daughter Gabriella Lee.

A man who carried the colors from McDowell to Fisher's Hill, only missing Spotsylvania Court House due to a wound at Saunder's Field, survived the hell of battle to be stricken down in a Yankee prison by smallpox.

The Confederate battleflag you mentioned issued post-Gettysburg with the battle honors was, in fact, carried by the regiment from after Fisher's Hill until the surrender at Appomattox. However, the flag was not surrendered. Lieutenant Joseph George Harnsberger Miller, the on-field commander of the remnants of the 10th VA, secreted the flag and took it home to Conrad's Store (now Elkton). As long as Miller was alive he proudly carried the flag, or allowed it to be displayed, at numerous Confederate reunion and memorial events in the Valley.

John