Born on December 3, 1766, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Barbara Hauer, daughter of German immigrant parents, grew up there and from about the age of ten in Frederick, Maryland. In May 1806 she married John C. Frietschie (later sometimes spelled Fritchie). Little else is known of the first 96 years of her life. In early September 1862 the Army of Northern Virginia paused in Frederick during General Robert E. Lee╒s invasion of Maryland. On marching out of town on September 10 the troops passed Frietschie╒s house, and she may have waved a small Union flag from the porch or a second-floor window. There may also have been some small incident as a result. Whatever the actual case, the story soon grew up in Frederick that Frietschie, who was known to be intensely patriotic, had somehow defied the Confederate army. The story╒s connection with fact was broken by Frietschie╒s death at her home on December 18, 1862.
The tale was heard by the novelist Emma D. E. N. Southworth, who passed it on to John Greenleaf Whittier. In October 1863 he published in the Atlantic Monthly his verse version, ╥Barbara Fritchie,╙ in which the story was much elaborated. In the poem, the flag flying from her house was riddled by Confederate bullets at the order of General Thomas J. ╥Stonewall╙ Jackson. Fritchie then caught up the flag herself and waved it, crying ╥Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/But spare your country╒s flag.╙ Jackson, deeply touched, then ordered his men to cease firing, warning ╥Who touches a hair of yon gray head/Dies like a dog! March on!╙ Whittier╒s version quickly became canonical, and the enduring popularity of the poem kept Frietschie╒s name alive. Despite its meager factual basis╤the one thing known certainly of the events of that day is that Jackson did not pass her house╤the endurance of the tale led to the erection of a memorial in 1913 and the building of a replica of her house (the original having been razed a few years after her death) in 1926.
