He fought for the King. Then he sat in the Congress of the country he had fought against. The uncle of Francis Scott Key lived the Revolution from the losing side—and came home anyway.
Where to buy the bookEvery American schoolchild learns the Revolution as one story with one right answer. The reality on the ground in Maryland was messier. Loyalists—Tories—were not foreign occupiers. They were planters, merchants, lawyers and sons of the same families that sent men to Washington’s army. Choosing the Crown meant choosing order over an uncertain rebellion, and it split households straight down the middle.
Philip Barton Key chose wrong, by the standards of the winners. Then he spent the rest of his life among them.
Key raised and served with the Maryland Loyalist Battalion. When the war was lost, men like him faced exile, confiscation, and a permanent mark against the family name. Key went to London, read law, and then did the improbable thing: he came back to Maryland, rebuilt a life, and was eventually sent to Washington as a member of Congress by the very people he had fought.
Collected and edited from period records and correspondence, this volume assembles the documentary trail of that life and lets the reader see the Revolution the way Marylanders actually lived it—as a civil war among people who knew each other.
Born in Maryland, into a prominent colonial family. His nephew, Francis Scott Key, would later write the national anthem of the country his uncle fought against.
Serves as an officer with the Maryland Loyalist Battalion—colonials in British uniform, fighting their own countrymen.
Leaves for England. Studies law at the Middle Temple in London and draws a pension from the Crown for his service.
Returns to Maryland. Begins practicing law and rebuilding a life in the new republic.
Appointed a federal circuit judge—one of the last judicial appointments of the outgoing Adams administration.
Elected to the United States House of Representatives from Maryland. A former British officer, seated in the American Congress.
Dies in Georgetown, having outlived the war, the exile, and the label.
The full record—documents, correspondence and context—is in the book.
Jonathan Beasley is a St. Mary’s County man twice over—by birth and by choice. He grew up in Leonardtown, where his father kept a dental practice, and he never left the county for long.
In 1990 he carved a motocross track out of the Southern Maryland clay at Budds Creek and spent the next thirty-three years running it. Budds Creek Motocross Park became one of the premier stops on the national circuit, drawing riders and crowds from across the country to a stretch of ground most maps ignore. A few years ago he handed it over to his son, Ezra, who runs it today. It stays in the family.
A man who spent three decades moving dirt has a particular respect for what’s buried in it.
The history came alongside the racing, not after it. Beasley has spent years as a collector and researcher of Southern Maryland’s past, tracking down the letters, records and period accounts that rarely make it out of archives and private collections. This book is the result of that work—primary material, assembled and set in order, so readers can meet the Revolution on its own terms.
He speaks regularly on Maryland’s Revolutionary War history, including as part of the Calvert County Historical Society Speaker Series. As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of American independence, his argument is a simple one: the Revolution didn’t happen somewhere else. It happened here, to people whose names are still on the mailboxes.
Stocking the book now. Stop in and pick up a copy.
Copies on the counter. Local book, local shop.
Available for speaking engagements on Maryland’s Revolutionary War history.