[2] She became famous as the heroine of the 1863 poem "Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier in which she pleads with an occupying Confederate general, "Shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare your country's flag."

[3] The poem brought him strong national attention at a time when the magazine's elite northern audience was seeking emotional resonance in response to the Civil War.

[5] However, her descendants successfully promoted her reputation, and the city of Frederick, Maryland, has used her name and image to attract tourists ever since the early 1900s.

Friends of hers stated that she shook a Union flag at and insulted Confederate troops, but other neighbors said Fritchie, over 90 years old, was ill at the time.

[7] The actual woman who inspired the poem may have been Mary Quantrell, who lived on Patrick Street,[7] and who, in a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in February 1869, wrote that her flag, waving from a second-story window, had been ripped down and trampled by Confederate soldiers passing through in 1862, then picked up and held close by her daughter.

Further, when Confederate troops moving west from Frederick and passing through Middletown demanded the removal of a Union flag flying from a window in the George Crouse family home, young Nancy Crouse took it down, draped it over her body, and returned to the front door to taunt them, and was not challenged, an act earning her the sobriquet of "the Middletown Maid".

[8] In addition to confusing Fritchie with Quantrell, the poem was likely embellished, as Whittier was a distant poet working from second- or third-hand accounts of the incident and other similar ones.

[13] Clyde Fitch adapted the story for the play Barbara Frietchie (1899), which ran for 89 performances and was criticized for its further departure from historical fact.

[15] The Barbara Fritchie Classic motorcycle races run annually on July 4; top riders from all over compete on the dirt oval at the Frederick County Fairgrounds.

[16] Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Volume Two: The Middle Years, a radio play, parodied the story, with a man attempting to cajole Mrs. Fritchie into staging the supposed incident, but finds her appalled to hear it involves offering to be shot.