The Star-Spangled Banner and Song Are United-- Part 3

Visitors will be more familiar with the flag which was given to the Smithsonian by the family of Major George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry during the attack. He was also the one who commissioned the huge banner to be made. (His nephew, Lewis Addison Armistead, later was killed while a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. So it is likely that the flag was in southern hands during the war.)

Except for a brief period during World War II, when the flag was housed in Virginia for safe-keeping, it has been in Washington, D.C., ever since the early 1900s.

Francis Scott Key's manuscript was purchased by the Maryland Historical Society in the 1950s and kept at their museum except for two times.

In 2011, it was taken by armored vehicle and police escort to Maryland's State Capitol in Annapolis and then to Fort McHenry. In 2013, it was taken to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Md., where Key is buried.

"Oh Say Can You...." --Brock-Perry