A black girl helped sew the American flag.

According to Teen Vogue, Grace Wisher, a 13-year-old indentured servant owned by Mary Pickersgill, the woman credited with designing the flag that inspired the national anthem, helped create the original flag.

Wisher was a free girl in Baltimore who became a servant after her mother Jenny signed a contract with Pickersgill.

“It seems as though Jenny wanted Grace to be able to learn a trade, especially as a free African-American girl,” Amanda Shores Davis, the executive director of the Star-Spangled Flag House in Baltimore, told Teen Vogue. “It would have been important for her to learn skills that could carry her through the rest of her life.”

Historians believe an unidentified enslaved woman also assisted with the Star-Spangled Banner flag. The only evidence of this woman’s existence is a title that lists Pickersgill’s assets including her slaves.

“Part of what complicates Mary [Pickersgill]’s story was that she is a slave owner in Baltimore,” Davis said.

Information on Wisher is scant, so the Star-Spangled Banner House does its best to include her story in its exhibits. They have transposed an outline of a girl representing Wisher on the plexiglass of a famous painting depicting Pickersgill as she worked on the flag. Tours and a model of Pickersgill’s house have been updated with information about Wisher.

“A name like Grace Wisher, unless you’re deep into the story about the Star-Spangled Banner itself, doesn’t often come to the fore,” said Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator of “For Whom It Stands,” an exhibit in the Banner House. “That’s why I think it’s important that there’s not a single narrative. There are things we think we know, but there’s more we need to know. And certainly, Grace Wisher’s life and her contributions should not go unknown. It should be acknowledged and presented in our historical displays about this era.”

Wilkinson believes this information will be useful for people who don’t see themselves in the American dream.

“The flag and the anthem are not the same thing. But because they’re related in terms of these symbols of American identity, these are places where people are invested,” she said.

“And African-Americans are as invested as any other American and understand the potency of these symbols to call attention to issues that they want to see change in.”

Mary Pickersgill

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