Radio Script #1179

Little Talks on Common Things
November 26, 1978

Are you aware that, as printed in our hymnbooks, there is a missing verse to the hymn entitled America that begins with the words, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee?”

By this time every listener to this program knows that the oft-sung patriotic hymn was written by Samuel Francis Smith, who was pastor of Waterville’s First Baptist Church from 1834 to 1841. The hymn was actually written two years before Smith came to Waterville, when he was a student at Andover Theological Seminary, but it reached its first pinnacle of fame while Smith was pastor of the Waterville church. On the side, he taught modern languages, French and German, at Waterville College, now Colby.

The hymn originally had five verses, and it was the middle one that disappeared from the hymnbooks. On July 4, 1832, when it was first sung at a Fourth of July celebration in Boston’s Park Street ,Church, all five verses were printed on the program, and it was then that the hymn got its title “America.”

In 1833 Lowell Mason, a noted church musician, included “America” in his musical volume “The Choir” but he printed it with only four verses. Omitted was the third verse of the original composition, and subsequent printings in numerous hymnbooks continued to omit it. Even when, in his old age,. the author himself made copies of the hymn, he omitted that third verse. Two of those signed, autograph copies are in Waterville, one at the First Baptist Church, the other in the archives at Colby College.

When Smith wrote the hymn only twenty years had elapsed since the War of 1812, but during those twenty years such friendship had been forged between the U.S. and Great Britain that many people felt the war had been a mistake – a view strongly held by New England’s leading statesman, Daniel Webster.

But Samuel Smith had been a boy on a rocky New England farm, and he knew how hard the people of Massachusetts had been hit by the Embargo Act and the subsequent war with England. So his hymn, as originally written had this third verse:

“No more shall tyrants here
With haughty steps appear
and soldier bands;
No more shall tyrants tread
Above the patriot dead;
No more our blood be shed
By alien hands.”

There is no firm evidence to tell us why that verse was, within one year, omitted from the hymn. But it is generally believed that many Boston citizens who heard it on that Fourth of July in 1832 considered “tyrant” too strong and too offensive a word. Boston had been quite ready to fight England in the Revolution, but it had been much less enthusiastic about the War of 1812. Leading members of the Park Street Church were wealthy Boston merchants. Between the close of the war and 1832 their trade had been rapidly increasing, and it was almost wholly with England or with her West Indian islands. It just wouldn’t do to have a patriotic line give unnecessary offense to the British merchants who had become business pals of the Boston traders. So the third verse of Samuel Smith’s “America” sank into oblivion.

Why did Smith, who could write such a strong, anti-British verse, set his words to the tune that was already the music for Britain’s national anthem “God Save the King?”

In an account of this hymn published in Yankee magazine, Helen Langworthy wrote: “‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ is the most plagiarized hymn in the world. The music was composed by a man whose name had become a symbol for the British realm – John Bull. He was born in Somerset, England in 1562, and was thus a contemporary of Shakespeare. The music had various lyrics soon after Bull composed it in 1592. It was, however, long forgotten, but was revived about 1790, when it was sung in Drury Lane Theater. So long had it then been forgotten, that when it then appeared with the new words “God Save the King” it was considered the work of the conductor, Thomas Arne, and was heralded as his invention. During the 19th century the hymn, with various wordings, collected different titles on the European continent. In Prussia it was “Heil Der in. Seiger Kranz,” in Bavaria it was “Heil unser Konig, Heil,lI in ‘Switzerland it was “Ruh der, mein Vaterland.” It had national. verses applied to it in Norway and France. Even before Smith wrote his words, the tune had been heard in this country with a lyric beginning “God Save Great Washington.” Helen Langworthy, consoles us with her concluding remark: “We shouldn’t mind that all those nations consider it their tune also, for it means that they too have recognized a great song.”

Now for a bit of information about the land intended and the land finally selected for the site of Colby College, not on its present campus on Mayflower Hill, but when it was founded early in the 19th century. The site granted by the Massachusetts legislature was 75 miles northeast of Waterville across the Penobscot River from Old Town. The Legislature had granted a charter in 1813 to the Maine Literary and Theological Institution. Two years later it authorized the Massachusetts Agent for the Eastern Lands to issue a grant of land in the District of of Maine to the new institution. On June 12, 1815, the agent made the grant with the following words: “On behalf of the Commonwealth I assign to the Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution all title and interest in township of land, Number 3 on the west side of the Penobscot River, it being one of the townships purchased from the Penobscot tribe of Indians, containing 29,164 acres, as surveyed by direction of Salem Town in the year 1797. The township is bounded on the east by the Penobscot River, on the south by Township No.4, on the west by Township 1, Range 4, of the Waldo Patent, on the north by Township 1, Range 1, of the township purchased from the Indians.”

That description seems to indicate that the land was in completely unsettled wilderness, but such was not the case. The grant said: “The Trustees of the Institution shall convey to each settler who settled on the tract before January 1, 1784, 100 acres so laid out as to include the settler’s improvements.”

The institution was given authority to designate on the land a lot where its educational buildings would be placed, but it must reserve 2,600 acres to be used for the sole purpose of building required roads through the tract. It could sell as it pleased what was left.

We know that the Penobscot tract was never used for college buildings, that it became absorbed into the small towns of Argyle and Alton, and after it was cleared of lumber the area became again very sparsely settled. What did the college immediately do about that grant? In May 1815 the Trustees voted to accept it with its terms. At the intersection of two main roads in the middle of the tract, they set aside a plot 100 rods square for buildings, gardens, and the general accommodation of faculty and students of the institution.

However, the Trustees soon became convinced that the place was too far removed from the more populous part of Maine. Movement was already gaining strength to make Maine a separate state, and the state’s capital would surely be located far from the Penobscot land. Indeed when the new state was formed in 1820, the capital was set at Portland, though 15 years later it was moved to Augusta, but even then it was nearly 100 miles from the college tract. Furthermore, the college saw little hope of bringing settlers to the granted land. The War of 1812 had left New England so impoverished that migration was at a standstill. The college must be where there were people in sufficient numbers to give it local support. So the trustees persuaded the Mass. Legislature to amend the grant, and on July 13, 1816, it decreed: “The Maine Literary and Theological Institution is hereby authorized to locate and establish their buildings in any town within Kennebec or Somerset counties.”

Among the towns considered were Anson, Norridgewock, Bloomfield, Farmington and Waterville. Farmington was then in Kennebec County, Franklin County having not yet been established. The appeal of Norridgewock was that it was the county seat and largest town in Somerset and already had an established, wellknown grammar school, as schools above the elementary were then called. It was therefore in a position to prepare students for college.

Farmington put up a gallant fight, using the influence of its Farmington Academy that boasted a Paul Revere bell. Wealthy families in Bloomfield contended that their townss academy was better than either Norridgewock’s or Farmington’s. At that time what later became Skowhegan was two towns, Milburn on the east side of the Kennebec, Bloomfield on the west side. James Hall of Bloomfield called Farmington’s bid sheer bluff. He said, “They promise handsomely, it is something else to deliver.”

William King, who four years later would be Maine’s first governor, was chairman of the college trustee committee to choose a site. In the winter of 1816 he wrote to each contending town: “Will you gentlemen please advise us, as soon as convenient, the amount which you can guarantee to raise by subscription provided the Institute is established in your town? Only a substantial amount will interest our trustees.”

Waterville had no feeding academy fora college, but it did have

two wealthy public-spirited men in the persons of Timothy Boutelle and Nathaniel Gilman. On the promise, substantiated by money put in bank escrow, they agreed to give $1,000 each if the inhabitants of Waterville would vote to appropriate $5,000 for the college to choose Waterville for its location. That vote carried in town meeting by a large majority. Money talks, as it was that $5,000 which caused the college trustees to choose Waterville.

And that is the story of how today’s nationally known Colby College with its annual expenditures of more than ten million dollars happens to be in Waterville.

Year: 1978