Hello my friends so happy you're here with me today I'm sharing a story about a man whose name you will absolutely recognize and I'm going to hopefully give you some little mind-blown brain-tangled moments about this gentleman and about what he has come to mean to the United States. So let's dive into my episode about the lovely state of Maryland and Francis Scott Key.

I'm Sharon McMan and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.

Francis Scott Key, Maryland native,

born in Frederick Maryland in the late 1770s,

and he was born there on a plantation called Tara Rubra.

He was born into an incredibly wealthy family who owned slaves.

And this became an important piece of Francis Scott Key's story.

He became a lawyer.

He married a woman named Polly and they moved to Georgetown, which is a neighborhood in Washington,

D.C. And they eventually had 11 children.

He continued his family's wealth,

and he himself became a slave owner.

He was one of those men along the lines of Thomas Jefferson, etc. who both publicly wrestled with enslaving humans while privately engaging in the practice.

He simultaneously wrote the words land of the free and home of the brave, while owning

human beings.

So he is not at all alone in this conundrum in US history where

some of the incredible documents the Declaration of Independence the US

Constitution etc.

And amazing ideas written by people who, by today's standards, have incredibly challenging

and problematic pasts.

But I want to dive a little bit more into who he was,

what his contributions to the United States were, and then you can be the judge

...