The Courage They Didn’t Teach: Mary Pickersgill Stitched the Flag Before America Had the Song

Each entry follows one life that faced danger, opposition, or erasure and stood firm without promise of reward. Some endured violence in the open. Others absorbed pressure in silence. Together, these stories show courage as a skill shaped by striving and refined long before applause, if applause comes at all.

A widow sat late into the night with huge strips of wool bunting spread across the floor, joining each piece the way a farmer mends fence before the first hard frost. Every stitch had to hold because storms don't respect weak work.

Mary Pickersgill: 1776-1857

Mary Pickersgill learned her trade from Rebecca Young, her mother, who made flags during the Revolution. Born in Philadelphia in 1776, Mary later moved to Baltimore, where she built a flag-making business after her husband, John Pickersgill, died. Her shop served ships, merchants, and military customers in a harbor city already used to danger. From Battlefields:

Mary Young Pickersgill grew up surrounded by flags and flag makers. She was born in Philadelphia, PA, on February 12, 1776, as the Revolutionary War came underway. After her father’s death two years later, her mother, Rebecca Flower, opened a flag shop on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. She sewed ensigns, garrison flags, and the “Continental Colors” for the Continental Army that passed through the city. When the family moved to Baltimore several years later, Flower opened another flag shop.  

Pickersgill worked alongside her mother until she was twenty years old. On October 2, 1796, she married John Pickersgill, a merchant. The couple moved to Philadelphia for John’s work and had four children together. Pickersgill worked as a housewife and remained in the United States as John accepted a job in London to work in the British Claims Office. Unfortunately, he never returned to Pickersgill or the United States and died there on June 14, 1805.  

Now a widow, Pickersgill relied on the same skills her mother had relied on after her husband’s death: flag making. She moved to Baltimore with her one surviving daughter, Carolina, and her aging mother. The family rented a house at 44 Queen Street and opened a flag shop once again.

War with Britain returned in 1812, and Baltimore prepared for attack. Major George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry, wanted a garrison flag so large British forces could see it from far away. He commissioned Mary to make a 30-by-42-foot flag, along with a smaller storm flag for bad weather.

Commodore Joshua Barney helped connect Armistead with Mary, who already had the skill and reputation for such work. The huge banner required over 400 yards of fabric, including wool bunting, with stars about two feet across. From the National Parks Service:

Commodore Joshua Barney recommended Mary Pickersgill as the ideal seamstress to create such a distinguished symbol. She was commissioned to make two flags: a 17 by 25-foot storm flag, and the stately banner that Armistead had envisioned, a 30 by 42-foot garrison flag.

This was a huge undertaking, one that Pickersgill could hardly complete on her own. She hired help from her daughter, two nieces, two free women of color, seamstresses of her community in Baltimore, and likely her elderly mother. Working late into the night, this team of women was able to complete the order in a short six weeks.

The garrison flag weighed 50 pounds and took nine men to hoist over Fort McHenry, but Armistead’s wish for a flag that could be seen far in the distance was realized. Both Armistead’s militia and Pickersgill’s flag would be ready for the Battle of Baltimore, which came nearly a year later. As Congreve rockets streamed the sky in the attack on Fort McHenry, not only could the British see Pickersgill’s flag, so could Francis Scott Key. Being held on a British ship in Baltimore Harbor miles from the fort, Key spotted Pickersgill’s flag in the morning after an evening of bombing, and was inspired to pen a poem that would become the National Anthem.

Mary couldn't sew a flag so large in her parlor, so the work moved to the floor of a nearby brewery malt house. Her household joined the effort; Caroline, Mary's daughter, helped with the work, and Rebecca Young brought the old skill of a Revolutionary War flagmaker. Mary's nieces also helped, as did a young free black girl indentured to Mary as an apprentice, Grace Wisher, who joined the sewing too.

Mary delivered the two flags in August 1813. A year later, British ships hammered Fort McHenry through the night of Sept. 13 and into the morning of Sept. 14, 1814. 

Rockets and shells filled the sky while Francis Scott Key watched from a British ship and looked toward the fort at dawn.

The great flag still flew. His poem, tied to the defense of Fort McHenry, later became our national anthem. Before the song had a name, Mary's work had already spoken.

Mary didn't become a battlefield figure, and she didn't need to be one; her courage lived in labor, skill, responsibility, and provision. She kept working after the war and later led the impartial Female Human Society, which aided widows and poor women in Baltimore. She helped open a home for aged women and served others for years after the guns fell silent. From the National Parks Service:

However, there was more to Mary Pickersgill’s life than just flag making. By 1820, she had done well enough economically to purchase the large house on Albemarle Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. In 1828, she was elected president of the Impartial Female Humane Society, a benevolent organization that aimed to assist struggling seamstresses, just as she had once been. Under Mary’s long term of leadership, the Society also began construction of a home for elderly women, which was completed in 1851. Mary Pickersgill died in 1857, leaving the Albemarle Street house and
Impartial Female Humane Society Home, as well as four enslaved workers, another indication of her financial success, to her daughter Caroline.

The retirement home still exists today, and the Star-Spangled Banner is in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Both legacies are a testament to the resourcefulness and determination of a widowed woman in the early 19th century, who, with the help of others, built a successful business based on her talent and connections.

That widow who once sat late into the night joined great strips of cloth so they would hold when the storm arrived. Mary Pickersgill mended more than bunting; she helped prepare a young country for a night of fire, fear, and waiting.

At dawn, when Americans looked through the smoke, her work still held.

Next up in the series: Joshua Barney

Joshua Barney steps forward next. Born in 1759 and dead by 1818, Barney went to sea young, fought during the Revolution, survived capture, and escaped more than once. In the War of 1812, he led the Chesapeake Flotilla against British forces and kept fighting even when the odds turned hard. His courage came from seamanship, nerve, and a stubborn refusal to quit when retreat looked easier.

Other columns in this series

• Franklin Before the Break
• The Woman Who Printed the Names
• The Man Who Refused to Stay Quiet
• Measured by the Stars
• Courage Measured in Seconds
• Margaret Corbin’s Stand Under Fire
• Hidden in Plain Sight—Deborah Sampson
• The Man Who Listened
• A 16-Year-Old Against an Army
• The Shot That Steadied a Revolution
• Mum Bett and the Law
• Phillis Wheatley and the Cost of Freedom
• Ona Judge Chose Freedom Over Comfort
• Richard Allen, A Faith That Wouldn’t Sit in the Balcony
• John Fitch: Steam Before the Spotlight
• The Night Dolley Madison Refused to Run
• Tecumseh, the Shawnee Who Refused to Think Small
• Prudence Crandall’s Classroom Rebellion
• Maria Stewart Refused the Silence
• David Walker Lit the Fuse Slaveholders Feared
• Thomas Macdonough and the Victory That Stopped Britain Cold