The actual woman who inspired the poem may have been Mary Quantrell, who lived on Patrick Street, and who, in a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in February 1869, wrote that her flag, waving from a second-story window, had been ripped down and trampled by Confederate soldiers passing through in 1862, then picked up and held close by her daughter. Further, when Confederate troops moving west from Frederick and passing through Middletown demanded the removal of a Union flag flying from a window in the George Crouse family home, young Nancy Crouse took it down, draped it over her body, and returned to the front door to taunt them, and was not challenged, an act earning her the sobriquet of "the Middletown Maid.” In addition to confusing Fritchie with Quantrell, the poem was likely embellished, as Whittier was a distant poet working from second- or third-hand accounts of the incident and other similar ones. The Confederate general in the poem most likely was not Stonewall Jackson, but another Confederate officer (probably A. P. Hill), since none of the men with General Jackson that day remembered the incident—although while passing through Middletown, Maryland, two young girls did wave Union flags in the presence of General Jackson, who bowed, removed his hat and laughed the incident off. Gen. Jackson and Barbara Fritchie both died before publication of the poem. Historians and reporters noted other discrepancies between the patriotic poem and witness accounts.