Prime Time Living 6.18.25 - Flipbook - Page 20
20 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Museums, continued from page 18
a more informed and thoughtful future.”
School groups have access to much
that the museum offers. Each of the
offerings detailed below will be available
virtually or on-site at JMM’s newly transformed campus.
• Immigration to Baltimore: This
virtual visit looks at the history of
Eastern European Jewish immigration through Baltimore’s Locust
Point Pier between 1889-1915. The
program contextualizes the experiences of Jewish immigrants during this time period and examines the communities they built in
the Jonestown neighborhood in
the early 20th century. With older
students, this program also uses
a multidirectional lens to look at
restrictive United States immigration policies from the 1880s through
the 1920s.
• Introduction to Judaism: Virtual
Tour of the Lloyd Street Synagogue:
This virtual visit uses the Lloyd
Street Synagogue to introduce students to major concepts of Jewish
identity, experience, and culture.
Students digitally explore the synagogue’s sanctuary, mikveh complex,
and beit midrash to learn about
Jewish communal life and concepts
like Torah, Shabbat, and Tzedakah.
• Holocaust Memory Project: The
Holocaust Memory Project is an
adaptable, interactive digital field
trip that takes its central cue from
one of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum’s Guidelines for Teaching
About the Holocaust: “Translate
statistics into people.” This presentation utilizes the collages, oral testimony, and written testimony of two
of the survivors from the Holocaust
Memory Project to contextualize
and humanize the massive suffering
of the Holocaust, allowing students
unique insight into the lives of individual survivors and the irrevocable
impact that the Holocaust had upon
their lives.
“It energizes people to see the different cultures,” says Hanner. “Exposure to
different cultures isn’t just educational
– it’s transformational. Even if you don’t
realize it right away, learning someone
else’s story changes you. That’s the kind
of impact we aim for at JMM. It may be
sentimental, but when I think of elders
in our communities, I think of them as
walking libraries – filled with knowledge,
experience and perspective. When we
lose them, it’s like losing a library to fire –
an entire archive of wisdom gone. That’s
why it’s so important to create space for
multi-generational conversations. I want
our recording studio to be a place where
grandparents and grandchildren can sit
down, reflect, and pass their stories
forward.”
This barely touches all that the JMM
offers to visitors, both in person and
virtually. You’ll enjoy your visit so much,
you’ll want to return often as the exhibits
change and new ones open.
The Star-Spangled Banner Flag House
The Star-Spangled Banner Flag
House, the home of Mary Young
Pickersgill, a seamstress who sewed
the flag Francis Scott Key memorialized
in what is now our nation’s anthem, is
tucked around the corner of the Reginald
F. Lewis Museum of African American
History & Culture. Pickersgill is one of
America’s great ladies, for in addition
to sewing a monumental flag, she was
a successful businesswoman, earning
enough to purchase the building that was
her home and workshop.
It helps to know a little history about
the War of 1812, a conflict between the
United Kingdom and the United States. It
was the latter’s first declared war, which
Congress voted for on June 18, 1812.
Chris Sniezek, M.A., executive director,
is a historian and spoke eloquently about
the huge impact this local seamstress
has had on our country.
“In June 1812,” Sniezek says,
“President James Madison asked
Congress to declare war on the United
Kingdom and got approval, one of the
few times a declaration of war was
announced and the first war of this
nascent country. There were conflicts
with the Natives going on in the West
and at one point, the U.S. tried to seize
Canada with initial skirmishes occurring
around the Great Lakes. Initially, the U.S.
didn’t win many land battles.”
Major George Armistead, commander
of Fort McHenry, a relatively small fortification overlooking the Baltimore Harbor,
decided the fort, built in 1798, needed
a garrison flag since Baltimore’s prominence would make it a target during
the war. He went to Mary Pickersgill, a
seamstress who had a house and workshop not far from the fort, in June or July
of 1813. There, he ordered two flags: a
large flag that would fly over the fort most
of the time, 30 ft. x 42 ft. and a smaller
storm flag, 17ft. by 25 ft. that flew during
inclement weather.
To get an idea of how enormous
these flags were, look at a couple rooms
in your residence where you know the
measurements. Armistead received the
delivery about two months later.
The original American flag, approved
by the Continental Congress in 1777, had
thirteen stars and thirteen stripes. The
flag crafted by Pickersgill was amongst
the last to have fifteen stars and stripes
(Louisiana, Ohio, and Tennessee were
states, but were not represented on the
flag). As of 1818, all American flags had
thirteen stripes, representing the original
colonies, with the number of stars representing the current number of states.
By September of 1814, both sides
had had enough, and they met in the
city of Ghent, now part of Belgium,
and in December signed the Treaty of
Ghent. The future King George IV signed
it at the end of 1814, but it didn’t reach
the United States until 1815. Congress
ratified it on February 17, 1815. What
followed is over two centuries of peace
between the two countries.
However, until the treaty reached the
U.S. Congress, the two countries were
still at war. In that intervening period,
in August 1814, the British burned the
Capitol, the Presidential Mansion, and
the Washington Navy Yard, leaving
only the Post Office standing. Next, in
September, the United States won the
naval (and land) Battle of Baltimore,
September 12-15, 1814, and in January
1815, two weeks after signing the Treaty
of Ghent, the United States forces under
Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New
Orleans.
Francis Scott Key, a Washington
attorney, was aboard a truce ship in
the harbor where he observed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. At dawn on
September 14th, he was so moved by
the appearance of the giant flag flying
over the fort that he was inspired to write
a poem, Defense of Fort McHenry. And
the rest is history.
Another observer of the battle might
have been Mary Pickersgill, watching
from her house.
Museums,
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