Grubb Family Tree

Notable military officer who commanded Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore during the war of 1812, the inspiration for Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner."

From The Armistead Family: 1635-1910 by Virginia Armistead Garber

38. George 8 Armistead (hero of Fort McHenry), son of John
Armistead and Lucy Baylor, born at Xew Market, Caroline
County, Va., April 10, 1780; died at Baltimore, Md., April 25,
1818: appointed second lieutenant U. S. Army, January 8, 1799;
captain, November 1, 1806; major, Third Artillery, March 3,
1813: was distinguished at the capture of Fort George, Upper
Canada, May 18, 1813, and was brevetted lieutenant-colonel for
the defence of Fort McHenry, September 12, 1814; married Oc-
tober 26, 1810, Louisa Hughes, sister of Christopher Hughes
of Baltimore, U. S. Charge dAffairs in Denmark, Norway,
Sweden. George Armistead died in Baltimore, April 25, 1818.
Issue: (1) Mary Armistead, born in Baltimore, December 2J,
1812; married, June 10, 1845, John Bradford. She died 1885,
he died 1852. (2) Margaret Hughes Armistead, born at Gettys-
burg, Penn., 15th September, 1814; married October, 1840, Lewis
Howell, of New Jersey; (3) Christopher Hughes Armistead, born
in Baltimore, April 21, 1816; (4) Georgiana Louisa Frances
Gillis Armistead, born at Fort McHenry, 25th November, 1817:
married 27th November, 1838, William Stuart Appleton ; died
in New York, 25th July, 1878; he died at Peperell, Mass., 7th
March, .891.

A clipping from Baltimore Sun is fittingly inserted just hen:.
Miss Keys writes :

I wonder how many of the descendants of the 'Old De-
fenders' who have just celebrated the 12th of September re-
member the names of the heroes who made that day an
epoch in the history of our people? Let us pause to do
honor to Major George Armistead, the 'hero of Fort Mc-
Henry,' as he is styled, who on that day (September 14, 1814),
saved the flag and so bravely and nobly held the fort against
the British bombardment, he being the only man in the fort
who knew that the powder magazine was not bombproof and
that any moment should a shell strike it a horrible death awaited
them all. But, thank God, a shell did not reach it, and Major
Armistead by so gallantly holding the fort not only won for him-
self a glorious record, but, the historians tell us, saved the whole
Atlantic seaboard from British invasion.

"The citizens of Baltimore, as an expression of their gratitude
to Major Armistead for his gallant conduct, presented him with a
silver bowl in the pattern of a bombshell, a set of goblets and a
salver. This bowl is now in possession of his grandson, Mr.

George Armistead. The historic flag, which was also presented
to Major Armistead, is now the valued possession of Mr. Eben
Appleton, of Boston, grandson of Major Armistead.
From a recent magazine:

"Francis Scott Key is the one to whom we are indebted for a
song which will live as long as America lives. Like "Yankee
Doodle" and "Hail Columbia !" this song too, had its birth in time
of war and was inspired by the intensity of patriotism.

It was in the war of 1812, in the lattqr part of August, 1814,
that Dr. William Beanes, an old resident of Upper Marlborough,
Maryland, was captured by General Ross of the British Army and
held as a prisoner on the "Surprise," the admiral's flagship. The
doctor was a personal friend of Key, who was then a young
lawyer, living in Baltimore. On the second of September Mr.
Key, in writing to his mother from Georgetown, said, "I am going
to Baltimore in the morning to proceed in a flag vessel to General
Ross. Old Dr. Beanes, of Marlborough is taken prisoner by the
enemy who threaten to carry him off."

The English fleet was in Chesapeake Bay and Key was kindly
received by Admiral Cochrane. General Ross had consented to
the release of Dr. Beanes, but as a combined attack by sea and
land had been planned to be made on Fort McHenry, it was stip-
ulated that all of the American party should remain on the flag-
ship until the fort was reduced.

"All during the night of that eventful thirteenth of Septem-
ber, the great guns of the fleet poured shot and shell upon the
fortress. While standing on the deck of the flagship, Key could
see by the flash of the cannon and the glare of the rocket, that the
American flag was still waving victoriously. The fight was in-
tense and persistent and the courage and endurance of the soldiers
was taxed to the utmost. In the dawn's early light, as he beheld
the Stars and Stripes rising above the smoke and waving
triumphantly, amid such surroundings and in such a scene, Key
wrote the words which will live.

The day after the bombardment he was taken ashore and that
night, at a hotel in Baltimore, he revised it, making it substantially
what it now is. The following day he showed it to his kinsman,
Judge Joseph H. Nicholson, who was so delighted with it that he
had it printed immediately and in a few hours, all Baltimore was
reading the Star-Spangled Banner.

"A remnant of the flag which inspired the immortal lines on
that memorable morning still exists. It is thirty-two feet in
length by twenty-nine in the hoist and is said to be in a fair state
of preservation. It is owned by Mr. Eben Appleton, of Yonkers,
X. Y., whose grandfather, Col. George Armistead, was one of the
heroic defenders of Fort McFfenry in 1814.

"The original flag was made by Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, whose
mother, Rebecca Young, made the first flag carried by the col-
onists in the war of the Revolution. Its original dimensions were
forty feet by twenty-nine.

"Key was born in Frederick County, Maryland, in August,
1780, and was but thirty- four when he wrote the famous lines.
He died January 11, 1843, and lies in a grave in Frederick, Md.,
over which floats every clay of the year, the American flag, and
it is reverently renewed on each Memorial Day.

"The old English tune. "To Amacreon in Heaven" is in-
separably associated with the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' and was
composed in London sometime between 1770 and 1775 by John
Strafford Smith, who was a member of an aristocratic society
called The Amacreonites, and the regular fortnightly meetings
were always opened with the song 'To Amacreon in Heaven.'

"No song is so used as this, and the memory of the author is
forever kept green as daily at sunset, when the garrison flags of
the United States are lowered, on all American soil and on every
flag ship of every United States naval squadron wherever it may
be, the band plays 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' "