Mary Pickersgill (1776-1857), a successful Baltimore flag and banner maker, delivers a 30’ x 42’ flag, along with a smaller “storm” flag to the Ft. McHenry garrison. Calling on help from her family and neighborhood seamstresses, including indentured servants and Grace Swisher, a free young Black woman, Pickersgill works day and night for six weeks to sew the flag together in a local brewery. She becomes the premier flagmaker in the new nation.
Within a year, the Ft. McHenry flag gains immortality as the “Star Spangled Banner” during the Battle of Baltimore. The famous flag survives and is on display in the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
From 1828 to 1851, Pickersgill is president of the Impartial Female Humane Society, helping local disadvantaged women. It is the first such social agency of its kind. In 1850 the Aged Women’s Home is expressly built to offer shelter to older women, also the first such agency of its kind.
