"Whose broad stripes and bright stars..."
While making preparations for The Battle of Baltimore, Major George Armistead requested a flag "... so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance..." to be flown over Fort McHenry.
Mary Pickersgill of Baltimore was commissioned to construct the flag. With help from her daughter, Caroline Purdy, she sewed a woolen flag measuring 42 feet long by 30 feet high, a remarkably large flag.
The flag had fifteen stars and fifteen stripes. During the War of 1812 there were 15 states in the Union, Vermont and Kentucky having been added to the original 13. An early plan for the flag was to add a new star and a new stripe for each new state. With 15 stripes on the Pickersgill flag, which was 30 feet high, that meant that each stripe was 2 feet wide and that each star was also 2 feet across.
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