The Story of Mary Pickersgill, The Star Spangled Banner and Why Your Life Matters. This week is a celebration of the Independence of the United States of America. Once again, I find myself in a foreign country for these festivities.
The Story of Mary Pickersgill, The Star Spangled Banner and Why Your Life Matters. This week is a celebration of the Independence of the United States of America. Once again, I find myself in a foreign country for these festivities. It is both interesting and a little melancholy. The Fourth of July, Independence Day, is a significant holiday for Americans. We take it seriously! Sure, we have picnics and gatherings and lots and lots of food but we don’t forget the sacrifice and the history that goes along with this important day. I thought you might enjoy the story of Mary Pickersgill, and others before her, that made this Day of Independence so important and why their lives, and yours, simply matter.
Many people know that the 30 x 42 ft. flag that flew at the Battle of Baltimore is the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner. But, even though the battle was fought on September 13, 1814, the story began at least a year earlier.
Major George Armistead was the commander of Ft. McHenry and he knew that it was a target of the British army. In July, 1813, he told the commander of Baltimore defenses: “We, sir, are ready at Fort McHenry to defend Baltimore against invading by the enemy…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 in seeing it from a distance.”
Enter Mary Pickersgill, age 29, of Baltimore. Mary was a widow at a very young age and had to support her family. Her mother was a flag maker during the Revolutionary War who sewed flags, uniforms and blankets for the Continental Army under George Washington. Mary followed suit constructing ships’ colors and signal flags for the military and other private vessels.
Armistead hired Pickersgill to construct a flag measuring 30 by 42 feet with 15 stars and 15 stripes, each representing a state. It took Mary, her daughter, three of her nieces and a 13 year old servant girl working ten hour days to finish the flag. This massive undertaking used 300 yards of English wool bunting. Each star, made of cotton, measured two feet in diameter.
The flag, also known as The Great Garrison Flag, was finished and delivered to Fort McHenry on August 19, 1813. Mary Pickersgill was paid $574 for the extremely large flag and a smaller storm flag. This was a hefty sum at the time, likely more than most people in the area earned in an entire year.
One week before the Battle of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key, went aboard the flagship of the British fleet to secure the release of a friend who had been arrested. Agreement was made to turn the prisoner over to Key but he and those accompanying him were not allowed to leave the ship at that time since the attack on Baltimore was imminent and the British did not want them to leak information about the attack. Some accounts say that they were allowed to return to their own ship but were guarded until the next morning when it was all over. It was from there, in the Chesapeake Bay, eight miles away, that Francis Scott Key watched the bombardment against Fort McHenry.
The flag that Mary made was so huge that it took eleven men to raise it when dry. If it was waterlogged, remember it was made of wool, it could have weighed as much as 500 pounds and likely the pole could not have supported the weight. During the attack the night before, the rain poured to make things even worse. The garrison flag was taken down and the smaller, storm flag that Mary had made, 17 x 25 feet, was the one that flew over the fort during the battle. But come morning, Major Armistead had the soaked storm flag taken down and put his beloved, immense flag in its place.
When the morning broke, (by the dawn’s early light!) Key was sure he would see the British flag flying over the fort in a sign of victory. But much to his surprise, instead, he saw the enormous flag, made by Mary Picksersgill a year before, waving proudly in the wind. He was immediately inspired to pen the words to The Star Spangled Banner.
Have you read the book by Andy Andrews entitled, The Butterfly Effect? The subtitle is How Your Life Matters. The book relates, “In 1963, Edward Lorenz made a presentation to the New York Academy of Sciences and was literally laughed out of the room. His theory, called the butterfly effect, stated that a butterfly could flap its wings and set air molecules in motion that, in turn, would move other air molecules–which would then move additional air molecules–eventually becoming able to influence weather patterns on the other side of the planet. For years this theory remained an interesting myth. In the mid 1990s, however, physics professors from several universities, working in tandem, proved that t