# Star-Spangled Banner > Mary Pickersgill's flag-making workshop, Baltimore - 1813 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/mary-pickersgill-workshop/star-spangled-banner-smithsonian/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Mary Pickersgill's flag-making workshop, Baltimore - **Date:** 1813 - **Medium:** Wool bunting (stripes and canton) and cotton (stars), hand-sewn with linen thread - **Dimensions:** As currently mounted, approximately 30 x 34 feet (9.14 x 10.36 m). As made in 1813, approximately 30 x 42 feet, reduced by an estimated 240 square feet, nearly 20 percent, through fragments cut away as souvenirs and other losses. - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** American, Federal period, War of 1812 - **Current location:** National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A hand-sewn wool and cotton garrison flag made in the summer of 1813 in the Baltimore workshop of Mary Pickersgill, with her daughter, nieces, elderly mother, and an indentured servant named Grace Wisher all documented as having worked on it. In its smaller storm-flag form the same commission is believed to have flown over Fort McHenry during the British bombardment of 13-14 September 1814, and it was the larger garrison flag that Francis Scott Key saw flying the following dawn and described in the poem that became the United States national anthem.Cut for souvenirs by the Armistead family across most of the nineteenth century, it lost an estimated 240 square feet, nearly 20 percent of its original 30-by-42-foot size, before Eben Appleton lent it to the Smithsonian in 1907 and gave it permanently in 1912. A 1914 restoration by Amelia Fowler, stitching it to a linen backing with roughly 1.7 million stitches, stabilized it for display but placed decades of tension on already-damaged fibers; a 1998-2008 conservation project removed that backing, cleaned the flag, and remounted it nearly flat in a climate-controlled case, where it remains today.It is not the smaller storm flag that most historians believe actually flew during the worst of the bombardment, and it is not the modern replica that flies daily over Fort McHenry today; both are separate objects from the one described here. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1813** U.S. Army, Fort McHenry, under Maj. George Armistead `[documented]` (manufacture and delivery) Commissioned from Mary Pickersgill's Baltimore workshop by Gen. John S. Stricker and Commodore Joshua Barney on Armistead's behalf; delivered 19 August 1813 per the surviving receipt. - **1813-1818** Lt. Col. George Armistead `[documented]` (use and custody) Flown at Fort McHenry, including during the Battle of Baltimore, 13-14 September 1814. Armistead kept the flag until his death on 25 April 1818. - **1818-1861** Louisa Hughes Armistead, his widow `[documented]` (inheritance) Inherited on her husband's death in 1818; retained the flag, which she also referred to as a 'precious relic,' until her own death in 1861. - **1861-unknown** Georgiana Armistead Appleton, their daughter `[documented]` (inheritance) Born at Fort McHenry in November 1817; inherited the flag on her mother's death in 1861 and inscribed one of its stars that year. Lent the flag to historian George Preble in 1873 for photography and a lecture tour, during which fragments are believed to have been given away. Her own date of death was not found in the sources consulted. - **1818-1907** Named and unnamed recipients of cut fragments `[documented]` (dispersal) Pieces were cut from the flag as keepsakes from at least 1818 (a fragment given to a soldier's widow, to be buried with her husband) through the 1880s. Documented recipients include Stephen Salisbury II of Worcester, Massachusetts (a blue fragment from Georgiana Appleton in 1874, in addition to red and white pieces he already held), the United States Naval Academy (a fragment traced through family hands back to 1876), and the Francis Scott Key Monument in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. A whole star was cut out and given to an unnamed official. The Smithsonian's own conservation team has concluded that documented souvenir-cutting alone cannot account for the full extent, roughly 240 square feet, of material now missing from the flag. - **unknown-1907** Eben Appleton, Georgiana's son `[documented]` (inheritance) Inherited the flag from his mother and stored it in a vault at a bank in New York City before agreeing, at the request of Smithsonian Secretary Charles D. Walcott, to lend it to the Institution. - **1907-1912** Smithsonian Institution (on loan from Eben Appleton) `[documented]` (loan) Arrived at the Smithsonian in summer 1907, folded in a canvas bag, still tacked to its 1873 canvas backing and described on arrival as badly moth-eaten though sturdier than expected once unfolded. - **1912-present** Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History `[documented]` (gift and accession) Appleton's loan converted to a permanent gift, formally accessioned 17 December 1912. Credit line: 'Gift of Eben Appleton.' Currently held under ID Number AF.13649, catalog number 13649, accession number 54876. ## Exhibitions - The Star-Spangled Banner: The Flag That Inspired the National Anthem, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2008-present ## Literature - Lonn Taylor, The Star-Spangled Banner: The Flag that Inspired the National Anthem, Harry N. Abrams, 1998. - Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, Discoveries Made while Preserving the Star-Spangled Banner, Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Vexillology, Washington, D.C., 1-5 August 2011, pp. 960-987. ## Open questions - Exactly how much of the missing roughly 240 square feet of flag is accounted for by documented souvenir-cutting, and how much by other, unexplained loss: the Smithsonian's own conservation team states the documented cutting alone cannot explain the full amount. - The complete list of everyone who received a cut fragment of the flag, and where every fragment is today, has not been established; only a subset of named recipients could be confirmed in the sources consulted for this record. - The exact date of Georgiana Armistead Appleton's death, and so the precise length of her ownership of the flag, was not found in the sources consulted. - Whether the repaired tear near the center of the flag is in fact the shell damage recorded on 12 September 1814 cannot be confirmed from the physical evidence alone. - The meaning of the embroidered 'B', the inked mark resembling an 'M', and the mysterious chevron-shaped mark reading as the start of an 'A' on the flag remain unexplained. - What became of Grace Wisher after her indenture to Pickersgill ended, around 1815, is not documented in any source found for this record. - The current whereabouts of the storm flag, the smaller companion flag likely flown during the worst of the actual bombardment, could not be established in the sources consulted. ## Sources - [1] Smithsonian Institution / National Museum of American History, object record for 'Star-Spangled Banner,' record ID nmah_463144, retrieved via the Smithsonian Open Access API (confirms ID Number AF.13649, catalog number 13649, accession number 54876, credit line 'Gift of Eben Appleton,' current physical measurements, and CC0 metadata-usage status). - [2] Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, 'Discoveries Made while Preserving the Star-Spangled Banner,' Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Vexillology, Washington, D.C., 1-5 August 2011, pp. 960-987. - [3] Smithsonian Magazine, 'When Collectors Cut Off Pieces of the Star-Spangled Banner As Keepsakes.' - [4] National Park Service, Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, 'Grace Wisher.' - [5] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Star-Spangled Banner Back on Display.' - [6] Wikipedia, 'Amelia Fowler.' Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a primary Smithsonian conservation-department account of the 1914 treatment. - [7] Smithsonian Institution, 'Facts about the Star-Spangled Banner.' Content retrieved via search-tool page extraction; direct fetch of this page was blocked by the site (HTTP 403) throughout this research session. - [8] National Park Service, Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, 'The Great Garrison Flag.' - [9] American Battlefield Trust, 'The Star-Spangled Garrison Banner' (storm flag dimensions and function). - [10] Wikimedia Commons, file description page for File:Star Spangled Banner Flag on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of History and Technology, around 1964.jpg (description, credit line, and license metadata). --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.