This page will be about the Colors and Color Bearers of the 37th Tennessee Infantry. Within the last few months I have recieved word from various sources on the existence of two flags belonging to the 37th Tennesse. After viewing these flags they appear to be post-war flags. I am still looking for documented flags belonging to the 37th. However it is my opinion that if any do exist they will be either in private hands or listed as unknown.
It is assumed that the regiment would have carried a Hardee style battle flag for at least two years of the war due to their associated with Lt. Gen Hardee. However it seems that the regimental colors, as well as those of the 15th Tennessee, were lost at Missionary Ridge. From the Chickamauga battle report of Lt. Col. R. Dudley Frayser: "On my way I was handed the colors of the Thirty-seventh Tennessee Volunteers by Mullins, Company A, Thirty-seventh Tennessee Volunteers, the color-bearer, brave boy, having been shot dead. Lieutenant A. O. Edwards, Company A, Thirty-seventh Tennessee Volunteers, followed after, bearing from the field the colors of the Fifteenth Tennessee Volunteers." O.R. p.397 Chap XLII.
The following report indicates the need for the flags being either lost or vitrually destroyed. "The evidence as to when the new Johnston pattern battle flags arrived has yet to be firmly established. On 31 December 1863, new flags were issued to two units of Finley's Florida Brigade and for a combined unit in Bate's Georgia-Tennessee Brigade. Since Johnston had arrived only four days previously (unless Platt already had flags in stock), it seems unlikely that these flags were newly made flags of the Army of Northern Virginia pattern." and "Futhermore on the basis of the characteristics of several Hardee pattern flags captured from November of 1864 until June of 1864, it is evident that many of the units of Hardee's old Corps had not been recipients of the flags from the September 1863 production. Instead, some are thought to have been issued to Moore's Alabama (the 37th, the 40th, and the 42nd) Brigade and others are suspected as having been provided to the remnants of Stevenson's division, after its exchange and assignment to D.H. Hill's (formerly Hardee's) Corps of the Army of Tennessee on 17 October 1863. Additional flags from the September 1863 production may have been issued as late as 31 December 1863 to at least the 6th and the 7th Florida Infantry of Finley's Brigade and the combined 15th & 37th Tennessee Infantry of Bate's Brigade, both then in Breckenridge's Division, who had adopted the Hardee battle flag when assigned to Hardee's old Corps after service near Vicksburg in 1862.
These flags generally measured about 2.75 feet on their hoist by 3.25 feet on their fly. Their dark blue fields were made from merino and were finished on all four sides with a white cotton border, 2 1/2" deep. In their center was a white cotton vertical ellipse, whose axes were 14" high by 11" wide. This disc was decorated with an abbreviated unit designation at regimental level with materials available. Although not finished in time for the battle of Chickamauga, these flags had been issued by the time of the siege of Chattanooga, where several were lost."
source. If this is true then on the eve of 1864 the 15/37 either received seperate, as before, or a combined flag in the Hardee pattern.
Unfortunately neither the Tennessee State Museum and Archives nor the Museum of the Confederacy has any flags for the regiment so until that time we will wait.
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