The Lost World of Francis Scott Key

PART ONE. THE SETTLERS

“My father came to America 1721 and my mother in 1722.” (Child’s handwriting on a slip of paper.)

I. Late 18th century America, when Francis Scott Key came into the world, seems like a primitive, distant place. Yet his earliest forebears in America would have been impressed, if not amazed, at the towns, roads and industry that were visible all the way into the back country of western Maryland, where he grew up. His father’s graceful home, in-between the Big and Little Pipe Creeks, was not situated by any major waterway, an unthinkable spot, fifty years earlier, to establish a home and a farm. But by 1779, the year of Francis Scott’s birth, the network of roads had made it possible to convey construction material, farm implements, and the mail to these remote parts. Major crossroads intersected in Taney Town (pronounced TAWNY-town), leading south, to Frederick Town, a boom town, westward to the Allegheny mountains, eastwards to Westminster and to the deep water port of Baltimore Town, and northwards, five miles distant, to the Mason-Dixon line. Four taverns in the village served as inns, mail and stage coach stops. In contrast to its sleepy counterpart today, there was constant traffic of animals, vehicles and pedestrians, and in 1779, soldiers and officers bound for, or returning from battle. One of them was militia Captain John Ross Key, age 25 when his only son Francis was born; the infant’s mother, Ann Phoebe, had been one of six Miss Charltons, daughters of tavern keeper Arthur Charlton of Frederick Town, fifteen miles down the Frederick Town Road (today’s rural highway 194). Although this was still the 18th century, the infant’s American roots already stretched into the remote past. Both father and mother, grandfathers and grandmothers, were American-born and raised. John Ross Key bore the names of his English forebears on his father’s and mother’s side. His wife’s American lineage was so ancient that nearly all memory of her earliest ancestor in America was lost. Patient genealogists have established that he was Henry (“Henrie”) Charlton, 19 years old when he arrived on these shores in 1623, aboard the vessel George. He must have been a man of means and education, a “gentleman,” since his family possessed its own coat-of-arms. Exactly where young Henry’s vessel took him is unknown, but from there, he proceeded directly “over the bay” and settled in Virginia. At the time, besides Virginia, there existed only one other English colony in North America, semi-starving Plymouth, established three years earlier by the Mayflower pilgrims. Virginia, by contrast, was prospering and growing rapidly. By 1623, any new arrival who settled here was automatically granted fifty acres of land, and fifty additional acres for each person whose passage he had paid for. Here, the climate and soil were ideal for growing a new export crop, tobacco. Europeans were long familiar with this weed, some even smoked it. The wild tobacco weed was difficult to grow in quantity, however, until settler John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, and still living in 1623, had recently cultivated a superior strain of it. Anyone willing to suffer the back-backing toil to produce the noxious weed could make a fortune, a fact that was not lost on young Henry Charlton. Yet no sooner did Henry arrive that all trace of him vanishes. He must have married, for the names Henry, and Edward (perhaps a son of his) persisted down through succeeding generations of Charltons. By the time the family trail picks up again a century later, they had come down in the world, and were humble farmers in Chester county, Pennsylvania. II. Less remote in time were Philip Key and John Ross, the great-grandfathers of Francis Scott Key. The similarities between the two men are certainly striking: they were born in England in the same year (1696), were “gentlemen” from well-to-do families, and emigrated to America within a year of each other. Neither knew the other until after they had settled in Maryland. Ten years after Henry Charlton’s arrival, the Ark and the Dove deposited the first weary settlers in the new colony of Maryland, astride the great Chesapeake Bay. Eighty-five years later, having surmounted many a crisis, the colony thrived. In the fall of 1719, 23 year-old Philip Key, accompanied by his younger brother, Henry, boarded their seaworthy vessel, the Minerva, and set forth for Maryland, from the coastal town of Plymouth. Before setting sail, Philip and his brother had hauled aboard their farm animals and tools, as well as six precious family portraits, for they intended to settle permanently in the new world. In fact, they were expected.