Key  (kē)  American lawyer and poet who wrote "Defense of Fort M'Henry" after witnessing the British attack on Fort McHenry at Baltimore on September 13-14, 1814. The poem was set to the music of an 18th-century tune called "To Anacreon in Heaven," renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner," and in 1931 was adopted by Congress as the national anthem. |
A lawyer and poet of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Key wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” while watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry, Maryland, in the War of 1812.