Here in this Federal-period house, Mary Pickersgill stitched the flag that would become the national anthem's namesake. Mary Pickersgill was a professional flagmaker, having learned the trade from her mother, who had made flags for General George Washington during the Revolution. In the summer of 1813, the commander of Fort McHenry, Major George Armistead, commissioned Pickersgill to make two flags: a smaller storm flag and a massive garrison flag measuring thirty feet by forty-two feet, the largest battle flag in American history up to that point.
Pickersgill, assisted by her thirteen-year-old daughter Caroline, two nieces, and an indentured servant named Grace Wisher, worked from this house and from the nearby brewery malt house when the flag grew too large for any room to contain it. They cut and stitched four hundred yards of wool bunting over a period of several weeks. The garrison flag had fifteen stars and fifteen stripes — one for each state in the Union at the time.
When that flag survived the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814, it became the most famous piece of cloth in American history. The house was built in 1793 and is one of the few Federal-period structures surviving in this part of Baltimore. Walk through the rooms where Pickersgill lived and worked and imagine spreading that enormous flag across every surface available.