History Focus for August 12

A short focus on a person or event associated with this day in History.

Katharine Lee Bates -

atharine Lee Bates was born on August 12th, 1895. Her father was the pastor of the Congregational Church located right around the corner from the house in which she was born. Katharine's father died from a brain tumor a month after her birth. Miss Bates moved to Wellesley at the age of thirteen and graduated from the high school there. Miss Bates then entered Wellesley College, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1880.

 

From 1880 to 1886, Miss Bates taught at Dana Hall preparatory school for Wellesley College. She continued her studies at Oxford, England, and earned a master's degree in arts from Wellesley College. She then became an instructor at Wellesley College, where she advanced to full professor in charge of the English literature department. She continued as a professor there until 1925, when she retired at the age of 66. Miss Bates died March 28, 1929.

 

Katharine Bates began her writing carrer at an early age. The first record of her writing is a small, red notebook that became a diary of sorts. Her first entries in the red notebook were at the age of nine. Miss Bates was a noted scholar, poet and writer. She was a prolific author, publishing many volumes of poetry, books on her travels to Europe and the Middle East, and stories, verses and plays for children. She enjoyed writing about animals and for children, but felt such writings were incongruous with her professorship, so she published books on Shakespeare and pre Shakespearean English religious drama.

 

Miss Bates was lecturing at a summer session at Colorado College in 1893. She joined an expedition to the summit of Pikes Peak in a prairie wagon. Atop Pikes Peak she was electrified by the beauty of her country. She hastily scribbled four stanzas into her notebook. These words later became "America the Beautiful."

 

America the Beautiful first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. Miss Bates rewrote some sections, and a newer version was published in "The Boston Evening Transcript" on November 19, 1904. Following the 1904 publication, part of the third stanza was altered, thereafter, the poem stayed the same, for Miss Bates retained the copyright, protecting it from misprints and deliberate changes. The only payment Miss Bates ever received for her efforts was a small check from The Congregationalist when America the Beautiful was first published. Over the years, America the Beautiful has become the country's unofficial second national anthem.

 

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© Phillip Bower