250 and Counting

Tag: 1857 deaths

  • Mary Pickersgill–February 12, 1776

    Cover art for February 12, 1776: Mary Pickersgill and the Star-Spangled Banner flag, now on display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

    The thing that’s hard to understand when considering the flag that Mary Pickersgill put together, and that inspired our National Anthem, is that it’s huge. Mike says specifically that this flag is 17 feet by 42 feet, but that’s hard to picture.

    When the flag was first displayed at the Smithsonian, it hung out in the open, against the atrium wall. But a flag that big, and that old, eventually begins to give in to gravity. So the Smithsonian folks took it down and spent a couple of years restoring it. Part of the work involved undoing the restoration job from 1914:

    Now, a lot of it had been cut away for souvenirs (you can see the frayed bottom partially disguised by the painted stripes in the cover art today), and that red “V” shape is really meant to be an “A” for General Armistead. But the flag is back on display, lying flat at an angle making it easier to see, in a temperature- and humidity-controlled setting.

    The parts that have been cut away are still missing, and the “A” has been removed. but even with nearly half of it gone, this thing is still enormous. And an original-size replica often flies over Fort McHenry, weather permitting.

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  • Jean-Guillaume Hyde–January 24, 1776

    Cover art for January 24, 1776: Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.
    Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.

    While the United States has had its share of international mishaps, not all of them have been created by Americans. Jean-Guillaume Hyde, more properly known as “Jean-Guillaume, baron Hyde de Neuville”, would be an early example of this.

    Hyde was probably a textbook case of failing upward, as he appears to have suffered multiple setbacks and still managed to come out ahead later on. As early as 1793, when he was 17, Hyde liked to work behind the scenes, trying to nudge people into saying and doing things that would benefit France, and oftentimes failing. This eventually led to his being made to move to the United States in 1800. In 1814 when the Bourbons returned to power in France, he was allowed to return.

    That’s where his diplomatic career began, and he spent six years as the ambassador to the US, where he was rather universally despised. From there he went to Portugal, where he was again a disaster as a diplomat. This time it only took about three years to kick him out.

    In 1828 Hyde became Minister of the Navy and the Colonies where he did appear to have some luck improving the way the French Colonial Empire was organized and run, but he eventually resigned from the position as a symbol of protest.

    Hyde was involved with the internal discussions to decide whether a new commercial treaty with the US was a worthy idea, though we don’t think he did any of the actual negotiating with America.

    Hyde died in Paris in 1857 and the book of his “memoirs” is actually a collection of letters and notes compiled by his nieces.

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