“Did you ever meet Barbara Frietchie?”
“Why, my dear sir,” he replied, “she lived just across the street from my father’s home.”
“You don’t say so?”
“It’s a fact; and let me tell you, that poem is a ‘fake,’ 303 pure and simple. I was a child during the war, but I’ll give you the truth about Barbara Frietchie as I got it from the lips of my father and mother.”
And then he told me this interesting story:
“Ever been to Frederick?”
“No.”
“Well, just where the turnpike enters the town my father and mother lived in the old homestead. Directly across the way lived Mr. Frietchie. He was a tailor, and a good, clever man and honest citizen. His house had two stories. On the ground, or street floor, was his shop. The family lived up stairs. There was a balcony to the upper story of the house facing the street. It was from that balcony that the flag was waved, but Barbara Frietchie had no more to do with it than you. General Stonewall Jackson, returning from Monocacy, passed through Frederick at the head of his army. He entered the town by the turnpike and marched between the house of Mr. Frietchie and the home of my parents. There was a United States flag in the tailor’s house. His eldest daughter, Mary Quantrell, thinking that the Union army was coming, mistaking Jackson’s men for the Federals, seized this flag, ran out upon the balcony and waved it. Observing her, General Stonewall Jackson, who was riding at the head of his troops, took off his hat, and ordered his men to uncover their heads. They did so, and General Jackson said that he gave the order to uncover because he wanted his men to show proper appreciation of a woman who had the loyalty and patriotism to stand up for her side. Those are the facts. My parents were there. They told me. I tell you. There was no sticking any flag staff in any window. No order by General Jackson to ‘Halt’ and ‘Fire;’ no seizing of the flag and waving it after it had been shot from the staff; no begging General Jackson to shoot anybody’s grey head but to ‘spare the flag of his country’—all of this is described in the poem—but none of it happened. Very funny about Barbara Frietchie being four score and ten.”
“Who was Barbara Frietchie?”
“Why she was the young daughter of Mr. Frietchie—the 304 young sister of Mary Quantrell, who waved the flag—that’s all.”