48-star flag used at D-Day on Utah Beach
Through the perilous fight?
The “Star-Spangled Banner” flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write what became our national anthem may not have flown through the night. Experts say the massive, 30-by-42-foot flag was taken down when it rained because the soaked woolen banner would be too heavy for the flagpole to hold. During the battle and stormy night, a 17-by-25-foot flag flew in its place. The larger flag was raised after the storm passed in the morning.
Historical snips
In June 1813, Maj. George Armistead took command of Fort McHenry. Armistead commissioned Mary Pickersgill, a Baltimore flag-maker, to sew the two flags. She was assisted by her daughter, two nieces and an indentured African American girl. After the War of 1812 ended, the Armistead family kept the flag.
The Armistead family received frequent requests for pieces of their flag, but reserved the treasured fragments for veterans, government officials and other honored citizens. As Georgiana Armistead Appleton noted, “had we given all that we have been importuned for little would be left to show.” More than 200-square-feet of the flag was eventually given away, including one of the stars.
How it got to the Smithsonian
Pickersgill stitched it from a combination of dyed
English wool bunting (red and white stripes and blue union) and white cotton (stars).
At the death of Armistead's widow in 1861, the flag was bequeathed to his daughter, Georgiana Armistead Appleton, who recognized that it held national as well as familial significance. As its owner, she permitted the flag to be publicly exhibited on several occasions. Eben Appleton, Armistead's grandson, inherited the flag from his mother in 1878. Faced with the public's increasing curiosity about the flag, he began to seek an appropriate repository. In 1907, Appleton lent the historic flag to the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1912 he offered the flag as a permanent gift to the nation.