Mary Young
Pickersgill
Maker of the “Star Spangled Banner”
While many know the story behind
Francis Scott Key penning the beloved
“Star Spangle Banner”, not many know the
story of the flag that was flown at Fort
McHenry that inspired the Key to write the
words that would become the National
Anthem of the United States of America.
This flag was created by Mary Young
Pickersgill.
Mary Young Pickersgill was born in
1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during
the difficult period of the Revolutionary
War. Her family moved to Lebanon,
Pennsylvania during the war and later to
Baltimore. There she was married and was
widowed.
Mary took up the trade of
flagmaking, needing to support herself and
her daughter. She became quite skillful at
the trade and became well-known as a
flagmaker. Therefore, during another
critical time in U.S. History, she was
selected to make the flag for Fort
McHenry. In 1813, Major George Armistead
hired Mary Young Pickersgill to sew a flag
with 15 stars and 15 stripes, the number
of states then in the Union. Anticipating
an attack on Fort McHenry by the British
during the War of 1812, Major Armistead
asked that the flag be made extra large so
that it would be plainly visible to the
English Fleet. He had also hoped the large
flag would lift the spirits of the
Baltimoreans, allowing them to see this
flag fly in defiance of the British.
Mary and her daughter Caroline,
then only a mere 13 years-old,
accomplished the task in six weeks. She
took great care to make sure the flag was
well constructed. The entire flag was sewn
by hand with flat felled seams and tight
stitching, so it would not come apart in
the wind. It required four hundred yards
of wool material and the finished flag
measured 30 by 42 feet. The flag had to be
assembled in a nearby malt house, because
there was no other place large enough to
assemble it.
This flag was used as the garrison
flag of Fort McHenry during the British
siege of the fort during the War of 1812.
When Francis Scott Key saw the flag from a
ship eight miles down the Patapsco River
on September 14, 1814, the flag was still
waving in the breeze after twenty-five
hours of heavy bombardment by the British.
The British were very discouraged to see
it still there, but Key was inspired to
write the poem that became the our
National Anthem.
