It was at Ft. Meade, Md,,,,,,,,,,,,that my father, who lived then in No. Cali, was stationed during Vietnam,,,,,,,,,,,,,met my mother at a USO dance in Maryland..........she lived in Hyatesville, and attended Northwestern high in College Park........................

Slavery[edit]

Key purchased his first enslaved person in 1800 or 1801, and owned six slaves in 1820.^[12] Mostly in the 1830s, Key manumitted seven enslaved people, one of whom (Clem Johnson) continued to work for him for wages as his farm's foreman, supervising several other enslaved people.^[13]

Key throughout his career also represented several slaves seeking their freedom in court (for free), as well as several masters seeking return of their runaway human property.^[14][15] Key, Judge William Leigh ofHalifax and bishop William Meade were administrators of the will of their friend John Randolph of Roanoke, who died without children and left a will directing his executors to free his more than four hundred slaves. Over the next decade, beginning in 1833, the administrators fought to enforce the will and provide the freed slaves land to support themselves.^[16]

Key was considered a decent master, and publicly criticized slavery's cruelties, so much that after his death a newspaper editorial stated "So actively hostile was he to the peculiar institution that he was called 'The Nigger Lawyer' .... because he often volunteered to defend the downtrodden sons and daughters of Africa. Mr. Key convinced me that slavery was wrong--radically wrong."^[17]

Key was a founding member and active leader of the American Colonization Society, and its predecessor influential Maryland branch, the primary goal of which was to send free African-Americans back to Africa.^[14]However, he was removed from the board in 1833 as its policies shifted toward abolitionist