America the Beautiful

The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; The world and all its fullness, You have founded them.

Psalm 89:11

In 1892, the United States observed the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

As part of the celebration, the city of Chicago sponsored a World's Fair, which carried over to the next year. It was in the early summer of 1893, that a group of professors from Wellesley College visited the Exposition on their way to teach summer school in Colorado. The women later compared the wonders of the man-made Fair with the glory of God's handiwork in the Rockies.

At the close of school, the teachers decided to visit Pike's Peak, elevation 14,000 feet. One of them, Katherine Lee Bates, later wrote, "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...

It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind. When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook....The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895. The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention...In 1904, I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct.

The new version first appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904.

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There are two stories about the melody, Materna, which was written by Samuel A. Ward, originally for a hymn entitled, "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem." Ward's son-in-law said that the tune was composed in memory of Ward's oldest daughter. One of the employees at Ward's music store in Newark insisted that he composed the tune in 1882 while crossing New York harbor after spending the day at Coney Island. The notes came to him so quickly he jotted them on the cuff of his shirt. Perhaps both stories are true.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul 

Note: Scroll down to the bottom of the blog and pause the music. ;)

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