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Lot 112
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Original poetry by Star Spangled Banner author Francis Scott Key!
Original poetry by Star Spangled Banner author Francis Scott Key!
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Description:

An incredible literary find: Francis Scott Key, the author of America's National Anthem, adds to the work of Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. Key's poem was discovered in (and offered with) a period journal with phenomenal provenance and Jewish interest

FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (1779-1843) Autograph Manuscript Signed, "F S Key Esqr," 1 page, 3.5" x 1.25", [n.p.], c. 1829, being four lines of a poem originally affixed in an 18mo leather-bound journal kept by Elizabeth Willis Gloster Anderson (1796-1873) of Warrenton, North Carolina. Light marginal wear and toning to manuscript, else fine condition; the journal has some loose pages, marginal chipping and wear to places, binding loose, but in overall good condition.

Key's manuscript is an original stanza added to Robert Burns' poem "John Anderson, My Jo," transcribed in Mrs. Anderson's journal by her friend Ellen Mordechai (1790-1884), a noted teacher and author, on September 9, 1827. Miss Mordechai began the transcription with her own original lines to personalize the poem for Elizabeth's husband who was also named John Anderson (and born to Scottish parents):

" John Anderson, my Jo, John when nature first began

To try her canny hand, John, her master-work was Man,

And you among them a', John, so trig from top to toe,

She prov'd to be no journey-work, John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John, ye were my first conceit,

I think nae shame to own, John, I lo'ed you ear'and late[?]

They say y're turning auld, John, and what tho's that so,

Ye're ay the same kind man to me, John Anderson, My Jo."

She then commits a mostly faithful transcription of Burns' original, a poem celebrating love maturing into old age (with spelling and word variations transcribed without comment):

" John Anderson, my Jo, John , when we were first acquainted

Your locks were like the raven, your bonny brow was brent

But now your brow is bald, John, your locks are like the snow,

Yet [sic, But] blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo.

John Anderson, my jo, John, we clamb the hill thegither,

And mony a canty day, John, we've had wi'ane anither;

Now we maun totter down, John, And hand in hand we'll go,

And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo!"

Francis Scott Key, obviously appreciating the sprit of the additional text that preceded the original Burns verse, contributed his own four original lines to the verse, which reads in full:

" John Anderson, my Joe John, from that sleep again will wake,

And another Man's [?] light, on our opened eyes shall break,

And we'll rise in youth & beauty, to that bright land to go

Where life and love shall last for eye, John Anderson my Joe"

Although Elizabeth Anderson's friend Ellen Mordechai wrote `these lines in 1827, Key likely added his lines to the poem in February 1829 when her first cousin, Congressman Daniel Turner (1796-1860) married Key's daughter Ann Arnold Key (1811-1884). She married Turner, a West Point graduate who had served in the War of 1812, on February 25, 1829 in a ceremony in Washington. Turner, who was completing a single two-year term in Congress, returned to Warrenton, North Carolina with his new bride a day before Andrew Jackson's inauguration on March 4, 1829. (Marc Leepson, What So Proudly We Hailed, Francis Scott Key, A Life, 2014, 163)

On the verso of the slip bearing Key's additional stanza is a note, written in an unknown hand, identifying the slip: as by "Mr. Key. Author of the Star Spangled Banner..."

In an unlikely, but serendipitous confluence of events, Ann Arnold Key's husband Daniel Turner later took a position as superintendent of the Warrenton Female Academy in 1846. That institution was founded in 1809 by Ellen Mordechai's father Jacob Mordecai (1762-1838), a prominent Jewish merchant who settled in Warrenton in 1792. He founded the school as a non-denominational institution and ran it until 1819, when he sold the school and moved his family to Richmond, Virginia.

Provenance: Elizabeth Willis Gloster Anderson (1796-1873); Mary May Anderson (1821-1879); Elva May Yancey (1842-1948); Alice Graham (b. 1877); bequeathed by Miss Graham to the family of the most recent owner in Alabama who was one of her music students. The journal is accompanied by copies of several newspaper articles dating from 1906 describing the Key manuscript as owned by Miss Alice Graham.

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