Francis Scott Key

Francis Scott Key

File:Ft mchenry cannon.750.jpg

Fort McHenry looking towards the position of the British ships (with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the distance on the upper left)

Francis Scott Key (August 1, 1779 – January 11, 1843) was an American lawyer and amateur poet who wrote the words to the United States national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Early Life

He was born to Ann Louis Penn Dagworthy (Charlton) and Capt John Ross Key on August 1, 1779, in western Maryland. His family was very wealthy and owned an estate called "Terra Rubra."

Francis was sent to Annapolis to attend grammar school at the age of ten. He graduated seven years later and began working at his uncle's law firm while studying to become an attorney. He started his own practice in Georgetown where he was a well respected attorney. He made his home there from 1804 to around 1833 with his wife Mary and their six sons and five daughters. By 1814, he had appeared many times before the Supreme Court and had been appointed the United States District Attorney.

Francis was a deeply religious man. He thought of leaving his law practice behind at one point to pursue a ministry life. He instead led an active role in his local Episcopal Church.

When the War of 1812 began he was conflicted, he loved his country but was strongly opposed to the war. However, he did serve for a brief time in the Georgetown field artillery in 1813.

War of 1812

During the War of 1812, Key, accompanied by the American Prisoner Exchange Agent Col. John Stuart Skinner, dined aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant, as the guests of Vice Adm. Alexander Cochrane, RAdm. Sir George Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross. They were there to negotiate the release of a prisoner, Dr. William Beanes. A resident of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Beanes had been captured by the British after he placed rowdy stragglers under citizen's arrest. Skinner, Key and Beanes were allowed to return to their own sloop, but were not allowed to return to Baltimore because they had become familiar with the strength and position of the British units and of the British intention to attack Baltimore. As a result of this, Key was unable to do anything but watch the bombarding of Ft. McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, and was inspired to write a poem describing the experience. Entitled "The Defence of Fort McHenry", intended to fit the rhythms of composer John Stafford Smith's "To Anacreon in Heaven", it has become better known as "The Star Spangled Banner". Under this name, the song was adopted as the American national anthem by a Congressional resolution in 1931, signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Text

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
’Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto—“In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Monuments and memorials

Plaque commemorating the death of Francis Scott Key placed by the DAR in Baltimore.

Key died at the home of his daughter Elizabeth, and her husband Charles Howard, in Baltimore from pleurisy, or cancer of the lungs. On the site of the Howard mansion is now the Mount Vernon United Methodist Church. He was initially interred in Old Saint Paul's Cemetery in the vault of John Eager Howard. He was later, in 1866, moved to his family plot in Frederick at Mount Olivet Cemetery. The Key Monument Association erected a memorial in 1898 and the remains of both Francis Scott Key and his wife Mary were placed in a crypt in the base of the monument.

The Howard family vault at Saint Paul's Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge between the Rosslyn section of Arlington County, Virginia, and Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and the Francis Scott Key Bridge, part of the Baltimore Beltway crossing the outer harbor of Baltimore, Maryland, are named in his honor. Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge is located at the approximate point where the British anchored to shell Fort McHenry.

His sister, Anne Phoebe Charlton Key, married Roger B. Taney, future Chief Justice of the United States and author of the Court's Dred Scott decision.

Francis Scott Key was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1970.

Robert Altman credited him with the "title song" of Brewster McCloud, though it contained only John Stafford Smith's instrumentals.

He is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, next to Thomas Johnson, the first governor of Maryland, and friend Barbara Fritchie, who allegedly waved the American flag out of her home in defiance of Stonewall Jackson's march through the city during the Civil War.

Media

The Star-Spangled Banner (1942) (file info) Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians sing The Star-Spangled Banner in 1942 Problems listening to the files? See media help.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Gregson, Susan R: Francis Scott Key : patriotic poet Mankato, Minn. : Bridgestone Books, 2003 ISBN 0736815546
• Molotsky, Irvin: The flag, the poet, and the song : the story of the Star-Spangled Banner New York : Dutton, 2001 ISBN 0525946004
• Hedin, Robert: Old Glory : American war poems from the Revolutionary War to the war on terrorism New York : Persea Books, 2004 ISBN 0892553103
• Meyer, Sam: Paradoxes of fame : the Francis Scott Key story Annapolis : Eastwind Pub., 1995 ISBN 1885457065
• Myers, M: Francis Scott Key : an anthology in memoriam (1779-1843) Middlebury, IN : Bristol Banner Books, 2004 ISBN 1879183633
• Leepson, Marc: Flag : an American biography New York : Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2005 ISBN 0312323085
• Lane,Janie Warren Hollingsworth: Key and allied families Baltimore, Md. : Reprinted for Clearfield by Genealogical Pub., 2000 ISBN 0806349778
• Bates,Katharine Lee; Key,Francis Scott; Ward, Samuel A; Smith,John Stafford: America, the beautiful ; and the star-spangled banner Van Nuys, Calif. : Alfred, 2001 ISBN 0739024477
• Philip, Neil: Singing America New York : Viking, 1995 ISBN 0670861502
• Hollander, John: American poetry New York : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press, 1993 ISBN 0940450607

External links

• Francis Scott Key's entry at the Songwriters' Hall of Fame
• Short biography
• Francis Scott Keys's biographic sketch at Find A Grave

Credits

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