Linda Follmer stands underneath the Bicentennial flag that was once flown over the U.S. Capital in 1976, and is now hanging on her front porch off Mallet Road in Warren County.(The Vicksburg Post/MELANIE DUNCAN)

[9/22/01]There are many American flags flying around Vicksburg and Warren County in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, but the one flying from the porch of Curt and Linda Follmer’s home is a little different.

The flag gives the residents of the Hullum House on Mallet Road in south Warren County just a little closer connection to Washington, D.C. It was flown over the U.S. Capitol for Linda Follmer’s mother on July 4, 1976.

Her mother, the late Mrs. Richard W. Barton, received the flag during the nation’s Bicentennial and kept it in its original box and with two copies of the original certificate of authenticity.

“I’ve got the original (certificate) framed somewhere,” Follmer said, waving her hand around the historic home she and her husband moved into about four months ago. It’s in a box, somewhere, waiting to be unpacked.

She said the confusion of boxes is sort of a double confusion. Not only did the Follmers just move from their old home in Clinton to Warren County, but it has been just more than a year since her father died and just less than a year since her mother died.

“I thought of it … I thought of our fathers (both of whom served in World War II); I thought of what happened and having a flag flown over the Capitol flying here in Vicksburg,” she said searching for just the right phrase.

“Vicksburg is so far away geographically, this is just a way to have a little piece of Washington here.”

Follmer said she comes from a patriotic family, tracing one side to the Mayflower and Curt Follmer’s family to Robert E. Lee and President William Henry Harrison.

And, too, it has a bit to do with the Hullum House. The Follmers are only the fifth family to own the house since it was build by Joel and Margaret Hullum in 1834. Following the Hullums, their eldest daughter Eugene Sue Hullum, who married William C. Mallett (whose name lost a “T” when the road was named), inherited it and lived there for a while. It then passed down to various members of the family until 1979 when Webber Brewer bought and remodeled it.

George and Beverly McMillin bought the house from Brewer and then sold it to the Follmers this year.

Follmer said she found the house was used as a hospital for Union soldiers during the Civil War. It took the overflow from the hospital that was operated at the nearby Redbone United Methodist Church.