Barbara Fritchie House

As the Confederate army marched through Frederick on September 10, 1862, feisty local Unionists, mostly women, showed their defiance by waving the Stars and Stripes. About a year later, John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized one of them in “The Ballad of Barbara Fritchie.” Historians have since pointed out that Stonewall Jackson’s column never passed her house and that the story of the aged Fritchie, who did wave such a flag from her porch when Federals marched through town, probably was conflated with that of Mrs. Mary Quantrell, who shook a United States flag at Confederates who ignored her. Nonetheless, the poem raised patriotic spirits throughout the Union when it appeared.

Frederick, Maryland · United States