The Answer:
The words were written by an instructor
at Wellesley (Mass.) College named Katharine Lee Bates
(1859-1929). The Falmouth, Mass. native first jotted down the famous
poem after an inspirational trip to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado in
1893.
America the Beautiful first appeared in
print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal,
on July 4, 1895. Bates revised it in 1904 and its final version
appeared in 1913.
The poem is set to the music of New
Jersey musician Samuel A. Ward. His piece, which is older than the
poem, is called "Materna." It was published in 1888 and reportedly
composed in 1882. The two were first published together in
1910.
According to the Falmouth
Historical Society, in 1926 the National Federation of Music
Clubs thought Ward's composition was too somber and held a contest to
put the poem to new music, but none of the entries was deemed
suitable. The poem has since been sung to a variety of music, and
Bates never admitted publicly which music she liked best. Today,
America the Beautiful is almost exclusively sung to Ward's
"Materna."
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