Katharine Lee Bates
Katharine Lee Bates, (
August 12,
1859 -
March 26,
1929), is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem
America the Beautiful.
Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Cape Cod. The daughter of a Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley.
The first draft of America the Beautiful was hastily jotted in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Miss Bates spent teaching in Colorado. Later she remembered,
- "One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."
The words to her one famous poem first appeared in print in
The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for
Independence Day, July 4, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the
Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.
The hymn has been sung to other music, but the familiar tune that Ray Charles delivered is by Samuel A. Ward (1847-1903), written for his hymn Materna (1882).
Miss Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books and children's books. Her family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society.
Katharine Lee Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1929.
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