Grace Wisher, and the Star-Spangled Banner.

Grace Wisher was a teenage girl indentured to Mary Pickersgill when Pickersgill sewed the Star-Spangled Banner flag. She was a thirteen-year-old free black teenager in a six-year indenture to learn housework and sewing. Her mother, Jenny, arranged the contract. Normally, the father indented his child; we do not know why Grace's father did not. He may have been ill, enslaved, imprisoned, deceased, or otherwise indisposed and thus not able to perform that duty. Reading and writing are not mentioned. In 1813 Baltimore, literacy for Blacks was not illegal, but it was frowned upon, and a woman's preferred occupation--Black or white--was wife and mother. Education did not make for an attractive marriage partner. Sources included Grandmother Edna, Griot, works from Stephen Whitman, Pilling and Johnston's book about Mary Pickersgill, Director of Baltimore's Flag House, and assorted books and websites. Grace Wisher disappeared from history after this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]