A Flag to Inspire a Poet
The Star Spangled Banner
Dec 31, 2006 Mary Trotter Kion
A Flag Built in a Brewery
After Mary Pickersgill was commissioned, in 1813, by Major George Armistead to construct an American flag to fly above Fort McHenry outside of Baltimore, Maryland, Mary and her helpers began working on the flag in her home in Baltimore, Maryland. However, when the flag became so large that there was not enough room in the Pickersgill's house the material was spread out on the floor of the malthouse of Claggett's Brewery.
Oh Say, Can You See Ninety-feet Upward?
When the flag was completed it was thirty feet, or the equivalent of three stories high. It was forty-two feet long and weighed eighty pounds. In all, it measured 1,260 square feet. It was necessary to make the flag this large as it was to fly from a ninety-foot flagpole.
It took Mary Pickersgill and her helpers six weeks to make the flag. It was turned over to Armistead on August 19, 1813. For her work, Pickersgill received, on October 27, $405.90, estimated to be about $3,400 by today's monetary standards.
Francis Scott Key Inspired
Fort McHenry now had its flag when on September 13, 1814, the British bombardment of Baltimore began at seven o'clock in the morning. Amongst driving rain, heavy smoke, and the red glare of rockets from the battle Francis Scott Key, then a prisoner of the British, had no way of knowing how the battle was progressing.
It was not until later that Key saw an American flag still flying high above Fort McHenry and knew that the British had failed in their attempt to capture the fort. And then, "by dawn's early light" Key began to scribble a poem on the back of a letter he had with him. That poem came to be known as "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Previous: Making the Star-Spangled Banner: Mary Pickersgill's American Flag.
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Source:
Molotsky, Irvin. The Flag, The Poet and The Song. Penguin Putnam, Inc., London, England, 2001.
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