Francis+Scott+Key

__Francis Scott Key__



Francis Scott Key was born on August 1st, 1779 in Fredrick (Carroll) County, Maryland. He was born to Anne Phoebe Penn Dagworthy and Captain John Ross Key on their family plantation. He spent all of his life in Maryland, studying at the St. Johns College in Annapolis Maryland. He became an American lawyer, and author and an amateur poet. He was best known for his poem that he wrote and is now our National Anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner”. During the war of 1812, he was captured by the British Army. As he was looking out at the harbor in Baltimore, he saw the flag through all of the haze. He ended up escaping and writing about his experience which was first called “The Defense of Fort McHenry”, which he then published in the //Patriot// on September 20th, 1814. From 1817 until death, he served as a Vice President of the American Bible Society. In 1843, he died at the home of his daughter Elizabeth Howard in Baltimore from lung cancer.

The Star Spangled Banner:
 * =====Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, =====

 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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 * =====And where is that band who so vauntingly swore =====
 * =====And where is that band who so vauntingly swore =====

 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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 * =====O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand, =====
 * =====O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand, =====

 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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