Barbara Fritchie Weaving

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 (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 Fritchie’s life, but a poem by Whittier about Fritchie made her a heroine to generations of school children in the US and abroad. A coverlet said to have been woven by her but more likely simply owned by her, is in the collection of the Historical Society of Frederick County, Inc. This close detail of the weaving pattern shows a warp of flax and a weft of cotton.

Courtesy of the Historical Society of Frederick County, Inc.