I represent Philip Barton Key. I joined the British army after the Declaration of Independence and by 1778 was appointed a captain in the Maryland Loyalists Regiment. The corps arrived in Pensacola, in the company of the Maryland Loyalists Regiment and the 3rd Waldeck Regiment, at the very end of 1778, but we were unable to be mustered into service until the end of February the following year due to illness. In late 1779, with both our regiments depleted by disease and desertion, the Maryland and Pennsylvania regiments were merged into the United Pennsylvania and Maryland Loyalists. They were separated again in December 1780. In early January 1781, a few months after the Spanish had captured Mobile, General Campbell sent a group of Waldeckers, Maryland and Pennsylvania Loyalists, and indigenous warriors to The Village (on the eastern shore near the head of Mobile Bay) in an attempted counterattack against the Spanish. The attack ended in defeat – including the death of the Waldeck commander – and the survivors retreated back to Pensacola under my command. After the surrender of Pensacola in May 1781, I was sent with the rest of the prisoners of war under parole to New York. When the Revolutionary War ended, I returned to England, but decided to go back to Maryland and settled in Annapolis in 1785. I was elected to the 10th Congress, and served from 1808 to 1813. Died at Georgetown, Washington, D.C. in 1815. Did I mention I was Francis Scott Key’s uncle?
Sources: 30, 51, 58, 59, 51