Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner originally as a poem. Together with his brother-in-law Joseph Hopper Nicholson Jr. it was decided to put the poem to the music of a famous British drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven”. This song belonged to a gentlemen’s club of musicians in London, but was well known and popular here in the early 1800’s. This music written for the Anacreotonic Society was by John Stafford Smith, and was written when he was a teenager.

There was one prominent music publishing family in Baltimore at the time, Joseph Carr and his two sons, Benjamin and Thomas. They agreed to publish the music and it was Thomas Carr who did the arrangement. These photographs are of an original copy of the first publication of the Star Spangled Banner as arranged and published by the Carr Music Publishers. The music being played on this site’s Home page and for these photographs is approximately what the music would have been like when played in the drawing rooms of Maryland homes.

Click an image below to veiw larger.