Francis Scott Key was born in 1779/1780 at Terra Rubra on his father John Ross Key’s large plantation located in eastern Frederick County, approximately six miles from Taneytown. The wealthy Ross, Scott, and Key families had acquired vast acreage in Frederick County in the middle of the eighteenth century when that area was considered the Maryland frontier.

John Key lived the quiet life of a respected country squire, farming and serving as a Frederick County justice of the peace and circuit court judge, but he maintained connections with his relatives in Annapolis who were among the elite of Maryland society. During the Revolution, John fought for the Americans unlike his younger brother, Philip Key, an avowed Tory who served with the British.

The brothers were very opposite in nature representing the conflicts, which Francis Scott Key faced as he matured. John favored Thomas Jefferson’s democratic ideas and mingled comfortably with his unsophisticated neighbors who had been his comrades-in-arms during the Revolution and were his neighbors around Terra Rubra. Philip returned to Maryland after the Revolution with great ambition for wealth and power that he rapidly achieved after being pardoned for his Loyalist activities.

Francis, called ‘Frank’ by his family and friends, spent his first ten years in the ‘Redlands,’ the Piedmont area of Maryland where the soil is red from abundant iron. A happy, peaceful life with his sister and parents had the luxury of slave labor on their farm. Eventually he began spending more time with his relatives in Annapolis exposed to a more sophisticated society. He had been educated at home, but later attended school in Annapolis and enrolled in St. John’s College there when he was fourteen. The matrons in the Scott, Ross, and Key families were very fond of quiet, well-behaved Frank, but his uncle Philip was anxious to turn the boy into a lawyer and politician like himself.

At seventeen Frank finished college and began contemplating what direction his life would take. He was interested in religion and had already begun writing poetry, but Philip considered the law a more appropriate profession and studying under an influential member of the Annapolis bar would be preferable to studying under a Frederick lawyer.

While still a law student, young Key fell in love with fourteen-year-old Mary Tayloe Lloyd, granddaughter of a former royal governor of Maryland and member of a wealthy, aristocratic Annapolis family. After finishing his legal studies in Annapolis, he moved back to Frederick where he practiced law for a short period.

In 1802, twenty-two-year-old Francis Scott Key married seventeen-year-old Mary and took his young bride to live in Georgetown where he joined his Uncle Philip’s law practice.

During the War of 1812, Key was summoned to gain the release of a friend, Dr. William Beanes, captured by invading British forces in late August 1814. Together with Col. John Skinner, an American agent for prisoner exchange, he set sail for Baltimore under a flag of truce approved by President James Madison. At first, the British refused to give up the physician from Upper Marlboro, but eventually relented. However, the three would be detained aboard a British sloop during the naval bombardment of Fort McHenry in the Baltimore Harbor.

The battle commenced in the early morning of September 13th and lasted 25 hours with Key, Skinner, and Beanes witnessing it from their unique vantage point. When daylight came, the three men were astonished to see the 15-star American flag still flying atop Fort McHenry.

An amateur poet, Francis Scott Key was inspired to write his thoughts on the back of a letter. This impromptu scribbling would become a masterful work of prose, originally titled "The Defence of Fort McHenry." Days later, Key's ode to the national flag would appear in local newspapers. Within weeks, it would be reprinted in publications across the states.

The words were put to a popular British melody and the song was adopted as the American national anthem, first by an executive order from Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and then by a Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover in 1931.

Throughout the rest of his life, Key may have regretted not making the church his profession, but he could not regret his association with people who made history in the nation’s capital during the early nineteenth century – Daniel Webster, Sam Houston, and Andrew Jackson. He worked closely with presidents, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, religious leaders, and others while maintaining his personal integrity and their respect. A friend wrote, "His whole life is spent in endeavors to do good for his unhappy fellow men…." The very lucrative law practice he eventually inherited from Philip was his source of income, but there were other facets to his life than the law and writing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

In spite of his busy schedule, Key found time to educate his eleven children and establish a free school in Georgetown. The school was an idealistic experiment that some of his associates thought ludicrous, but he had a strong sense of obligation to make his world a better place. He also helped found the American Colonization Society, a controversial effort to establish a colony of freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. The Society, backed by groups hoping to solve the dilemma of what to do with former slaves, ultimately failed, but it was another of his efforts to address America’s social problems during the 1820s and 1830s.

Key, a warm and sympathetic person, maintained friendships with many people whose beliefs were sometimes quite different from his own. John Randolph of Roanoke was one such individual, a brilliant but eccentric politician from an aristocratic Virginia family and a firm believer in states’ rights. Randolph was a bachelor, heavy drinker, opium user, and owner of more than 300 slaves, but he enjoyed the company of Key, the temperate family man who had freed his slaves and felt America needed a strong central government.

During the 1830s, Key successfully lobbied President Andrew Jackson to appoint his brother-in-law, Roger Brooke Taney, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Although Key and Taney felt very differently on some issues, they had been good friends since they practiced law together in Frederick.

Key was an influential insider during the two-term administration of Jackson although he never held an elected office. In 1833 Jackson trusted him to carry out a very sensitive diplomatic mission involving the Governor of Alabama. Key served as District Attorney for the District of Columbia for three terms, but it was not an appointment he sought. In general, he disliked confrontations and intrigues.

Francis Scott Key died of pneumonia at the home of his daughter in Baltimore in 1843 in his early sixties. Penning our national anthem was just one of many accomplishments of this complex, deeply religious, patriotic man born in present-day Carroll County.

Following his death, his body lay in St. Paul's Cemetery in Baltimore within the Howard family crypt. After the Civil War, a contingent of leading Frederick residents lobbied Key's children to re-inter the author in their "new" rural cemetery in his beloved, native home. They obliged, and Francis Scott Key's remains were brought to Mount Olivet in 1866.

Local citizens formed the Francis Scott Key Monument Association, organized to plan an appropriate memorial for the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Fundraising efforts totaled $30,000, most of which was contributed by schoolchildren and others from around the country. The monument was dedicated August 9, 1898, amidst a flurry of local, state, and national fanfare and newspaper coverage. A resolution by Congress is responsible for the flag being flown continuously over the Francis Scott Key Memorial and gravesite since 1949.

David Buie is a Taneytown Resident who has a passion for
Carroll County and its place in history.

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