Barbara Hauer was born in 1766 in Lancaster, PA, the daughter of German immigrants who arrived from Palatine in 1754. Her father was a craftsman, a hatter. In 1806, she married John C. Frietschie (anglicized as Fritchie), a glove maker.
At some point they moved to Frederick, Maryland, where, at age 96 and in her final year of life, she may have been involved in an incident of defiant Union flag waving as the ill-fated Army of Northern Virginia, led by Stonewall Jackson, marched by her West Patrick Street house. This army was on their way to wholesale destruction at Antietam during the Confederate invasion of Maryland in September, 1862, a battle which led to Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Little is known of the truth of this incident or the facts of Barbara Frietchie’s (alternative spelling) life, but a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier about Frietschie made her a heroine to generations of school children in the US and abroad. The tale became so widespread that Winston Churchill, pausing at a replica of Frietschie’s home in 1942, recited the poem from memory.
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OESY ... thank you for filling in the blanks.
I’m going to take this info as truth. It is a wonderful example of patriotism. A great poem for Flag Day!