Mary Pickersgill at work on the flag in Baltimore.
The story of America’s most famous flag begins in the summer of 1814, when the first stitches of the Star-Spangled Banner were sewn. This was the enormous flag that flew as the defeated British fleet sailed away from Baltimore on September 14, 1814. The British could not resist firing a few parting shots that tore holes in the fabric.
The huge flag, an American symbol since 1812 war, was also an inspiration to an amateur poet who witnessed the battle. “By dawn’s early light,” Francis Scott Key jotted down a few verses of what would become the national anthem. The flag that inspired the poem would forever be known as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The history of that flag, of how if came to be made by an independent-minded widow, begins at The Star Spangled Banner House on East Pratt Street. The brick row house is located just a few blocks beyond Baltimore’s bustling Inner Harbor attractions, but on a July day with the temperature near 100 and Maryland’s infamous humidity draped over the city like a wet blanket, only a handful of people had made the walk to this quiet historical spot.
“It’s a war that you don’t hear a lot about unless you live in Baltimore,” said tour guide Ellie Marine, adding that there had been a slight increase in the number of visitors to the flag house since the terrorist attacks.
In 1812, this modest city row house was the home of Mary Young Pickersgill, a successful flag maker and quiet patriot. Pickersgill was a rarity at a time when business was very much a man’s domain. Marine led our small group of visitors through the house where the resourceful Mrs. Pickersgill managed to carve out a middle class living.
When her husband died on a business trip to England in 1805, she was left to support herself. By 1812, she had a large household that included her elderly mother, fourteen-year-old daughter Caroline, a female slave, a free African American servant and a young girl apprenticed to her. Aside from the occasional male boarder, the row house was very much a woman’s domain.
“The house was located near the harbor and they had a very successful business supplying flags to ships,” Marine said. “A flag maker in Baltimore was quite busy if she was good. Every ship owner in Baltimore had his own flag. Also, things like signal flags wear out very quickly and have to be replaced.”
Pickersgill inherited her flagmaking skills from her mother, Rebecca Young, who made the Grand Union flag for George Washington that flew over his headquarters at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War. You might recognize a picture of it from your grade school history book: the banner featured the same red and white stripes of today’s flag but featured a Union Jack in place of the blue field and white stars.
“That’s one of the coincidences of history that you have a mother-daughter flag making team,” Marine said. “It’s one of those things you’ll never see again.”
Pickersgill’s days were full of hard work. She rose before dawn to stoke the kitchen fire and start the day’s cooking, then met with customers and sewed flags. Pickersgill did not know it yet, but the War of 1812 was about to make her famous.
. . .
Major George Armistead, commander at Fort McHenry, was the man who first proposed a huge flag for the fort guarding the city’s harbor. In a letter to General Sam Smith, military commander of Baltimore, he wrote, “We, sir, are ready at Fort McHenry to defend Baltimore against invading by the enemy. That is to say, we are ready except that we have no suitable ensign to display over the Star Fort and it is my desire to have a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.”
A delegation consisting of Armistead, Smith, General John Stricker and Pickersgill’s brother-in-law – that old salt Commodore Joshua Barney – soon called on the seamstress. They met in the downstairs dining room, where they sipped tea and discussed the particulars of the flag.
The men wanted an enormous banner measuring thirty feet by forty-two feet. Fifteen stars and fifteen stripes would represent each state of the Union. The stars would be two feet across. The stripes would each be two feet wide, eight red and seven white. For her efforts, Pickersgill would receive $405.90, a sum this savvy businesswoman must have known would barely pay her expenses for the material alone.
According to historians at the flag house, it is likely that Pickersgill donated her labor out of a sense of patriotism. Taking on the job also could have been a matter of professional pride. She might have welcomed the chance to make a flag as prestigious as the one that would fly over Fort McHenry.
To make such a huge flag required a lightweight material; otherwise, it would have been too heavy to fly. Pickersgill settled on a loosely woven fabric known as English wool bunting. She secured 400 yards of it at a cost of $1 per yard. Ironically, the fabric for the flag came from America’s enemy in 1812. Pickersgill was well-connected with sea captains willing to run the blockade and deliver the necessary fabric from England.
“From what we understand, she got the wool bunting while we were at war with England by making a deal with a privateer,” Marine said. Obtaining the fabric was only the first obstacle. “Mary finds out very quickly that she has a bit of a problem. She realizes she’s going to run out of room in her house. You would find you had two feet of English bunting to go when you ran out of room.”
To keep from having to bunch up the fabric and make a mess of the stitching, she moved the project to a brewery where there was room to spread out. Pickersgill did not work on the flag alone, but historians say she did most of the sewing herself.
“She started very early in the morning before anyone else was up and she worked late into the night,” said Marine. Pickersgill was one of the first up as the household stirred to life at about 5 a.m. and the work of the day began. She toiled on the flag until at least 9 p.m. and sometimes past midnight. By the time the flag makers were done, the women had sewn 350,000 stitches. Pickersgill must have been exhausted.
Several years ago, a group of seventy-seven women took seven weeks to sew a replica of the flag. Pickersgill did it in six weeks. Her flag was finished on August 10, 1814. The British attack on Baltimore came just over one month later.
Historians are fairly certain that the flag flying above Fort McHenry for most of the battle was not the actual Star-Spangled Banner. Instead, the fort flew a smaller “storm flag” that had also been made by Pickersgill. The Star-Spangled Banner was raised toward the end of the fight. One reason for using the storm flag was that a heavy rain fell during most of the battle. Marine pointed out that the rain would have made the full-sized flag so heavy that it might have snapped the flag pole. “Lucky for us it did rain,” Marine said. “Many of the bombs fizzled out in the air. Most likely the flag was hit when the British fired their last shots.”
. . .
During past occasions at the Flag House, Marine has donned a gown and mob cap to portray the nineteenth century seamstress. In costume, Marine bears more than a passing resemblance to the round-faced, bespectacled Pickersgill.
Marine spoke enthusiastically, even wistfully, about 1812-era Baltimore. Streets were muddy or dusty, depending on the season. Daily chores included hauling water from City Springs six blocks away. The women of the Pickersgill household were constantly in the kitchen preparing food or heating irons in the large fireplace to smooth the wrinkles out of newly made flags. “It reflected better on Mary’s work if the flags left here neater than her competition,” Marine said.
One by one, Marine explained the items in a nineteenth century kitchen. A cast iron crane was used to hang kettles and pots over the fire. A reflecting oven had a spit for roasting meat, while another oven was intended for baking bread. Marine pointed out that the open fire made the kitchen a dangerous place to work. Burns were the second leading cause of death for women. Only childbirth killed more. “We take a lot for granted today,” Marine said. “They would no sooner have finished breakfast than it was time to start preparing the main meal of the day. They spent all day cooking.”
“Everything back then was so much work!” said a woman from California, who had spent the previous day visiting the original flag at the Smithsonian Institution. “It kind of makes you appreciate TV dinners.”
This household of seamstresses enjoyed occasional small pleasures, such as tea or even hot chocolate. Sugar was so valuable it was kept under lock and key. The kitchen might have been the heart of the house, but it was the flag business that kept the larder stocked.
In addition to making flags, Pickersgill also kept a boarder in a second floor bedroom advertised as a “healthful room” by dint of its three windows that provided ventilation. The boarders were generally sea captains Pickersgill knew, in town for a few weeks or months before their ship set sail again.
“Her mother knew what it was like to keep body and soul together and she passed that ethic on to Mary,” Marine said of Pickersgill’s upbringing. “In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, there are not many options for women without funds. It’s a very hard time if you do not have money.”
An awareness of the thin line between the middle class and poverty likely led Pickersgill to become a social activist. Together with similar-minded women, in 1802 she formed a group to help respectable women whose support systems had crumbled. This often meant widowed young mothers and elderly spinsters. To help those in need, the group founded what was somewhat ponderously called the Impartial Female and Humane Society and Male Free School. “She had seen a lot of women fall through the cracks and left destitute,” Marine said.
Mary died in 1857 at age 81. Her legacy survives at the Pickersgill Retirement Community. Begun in the mid-1800s, the facility recently underwent a major renovation, and continues to carry out the work its founder envisioned.
. . .
Within days of the British defeat at Baltimore, the flag that had flown over Fort McHenry was famous. The major victory, the flag’s massive size and Francis Scott Key’s poem were a powerful combination. Thanks to Key, the flag also had a name, the Star-Spangled Banner.
When Armistead gave up his command of Fort McHenry he took the flag with him. Historians say it’s likely the former commander was given the flag as a token of thanks.
It wasn’t long before the flag began to be diminished by bits and pieces. British cannonballs began the process and the widows of veterans soon joined in. “The widows came and asked if they might have a piece of the flag to bury with their husbands and Major Armistead obliged them,” Marine explained.
Visitors and dinner guests received pieces of the flag as souvenirs. At some point, one of the two-foot stars was cut away. Destroying a valued item in the process of admiring it may seem strange today, but such keepsakes were common in the nineteenth century. Confederate hero Robert E. Lee, for example, was besieged by admirers seeking tokens. He sent them locks of his hair or buttons from his uniform. For the flag, the deterioration would continue for nearly a century, until the Star Spangled Banner passed into the hands of the Smithsonian Institution in 1907.
i thought this performance was alot better then when they did here i stand