Kane Farabaugh's Kanestergram

It's been an interesting Flag Day. Today, I covered a story as interesting as it is significant to American History. And in covering this story, which started several weeks ago, it led to a nostalgic look back at my own family history. Four Revolutionary Battle Flags under the ownership of a British family for more than 225 years were sold at auction at Sothebys here in New York. The british officer who captured the flags at the Battle of Pound Ridge in New York in 1779 and at the Battle of Waxhaws in South Carolina in 1780 passed them down through six generations of his family until the current man, his great great great great nephew, realized that they are the only examples of the "Stars and Stripes" that exist in the world today, and decided they were too valubale to hang on his wall, not to mention not easy to insure. So when I started covering this story, it made me look back on the items of my family. My own family history. Urban Fredrick Farabaugh, U.S. Army 1918 ...

June 14 is Flag Day in the United States. Sotheby's auction house in New York marked the date this year with a unique offering. VOA's Kane Farabaugh reports on how the holiday and history intersect with one family's private collection of flags now heading to the auction block. The flags could fetch as much as $10 million. The flags were the symbols of an American nation in its infancy -- symbols currently under the care of Sotheby's vice chairman, David Redden. "It's ironic to think that the most important item on the battlefield wasn't a sword, wasn't a musket, wasn't a cannon, it was the colors." To the country they represented, they were more than just simple colors. It was in a battle fought more than two centuries ago during America's War of Independence that the story of four flags began. Revolutionary War re-enactor and retired U.S. Army Colonel James Johnson describes the significance a flag carried during the early days of the Am...