<\/p>\n
I want to start this week’s program with a tribute to one of the most famous men who ever made his home in Waterville. Although he lived here more than 120 years ago, almost every person in the United States has heard of him. His name was Samuel Francis Smith, the author of the patriotic hymn “America”, that begins with the familiar words, “My Country, ‘ti s of thee”.<\/p>\n
Smith was not a native of Maine. He was born in Boston in 1808, and after 87 years of eventful life he died in the same city in 1895. His family, though by no means of the wealthy aristocracy of Boston, were so well thought of and had such financial means that from early boyhood Samuel Francis was slated for eventual attendance at Harvard, the hallmark of New England success. To prepare for college he attended the most famous New England fitting school of the time, the Boston Latin School. A few months before his 21st birthday he received his Harvard degree in 1829. Having already decided on the ministry as his profession, he then enrolled at the Andover Theological Seminary, where he took his bachelor of divinity degree in 1832. For a little more than one year he then worked on a Boston newspaper before taking his first pastorate. When on January 1, 1834 the time came for Samuel Francis Smith to take over his first ministry, that place was the First Baptist Church of Waterville, Maine.<\/p>\n
Like his contemporary, Henry W. Longfellow, Samuel F. Smith was interested in the study of foreign languages, especially German; and had he not felt a stronger call to the ministry, Smith, like Longfellow. might well have gone for advanced study to the then popular and renowned German universities. He knew French as well as German, and locally he has the historic distinction of being the first teacher to conduct a class in a modern foreign language at Colby College.<\/p>\n
When Smith came to Waterville, college classes as distinct from the theological course, had been held for only 14 years, because it was not until 1820 that the institution was empowered to confer degrees and became truly a college. In Massachusetts, however, Smith had heard much about Jeremiah Chaplin, about how he had brought his seven theological students from his home in Danvers to be the first students enrolled at the Maine Literary and Theological Institution in Waterville.<\/p>\n
Smith also knew that the First Baptist Church in Waterville, to which he had accepted the pastoral call, had been founded by Chaplin in 1818, and that it was considered very definitely to be the college church.<\/p>\n
What could be more natural, when the young pastor arrived to take charge of the church, where Chaplin had until a few months previous, been the most prominent member, than that Smith should take an interest in college affairs? Chaplin had resigned only six months before Smith’s arrival, and Rufus Babcock had become the new college president. Even more strongly than Chaplin, Babcock believed in strengthening the collegiate, rather than the theological, side of the curriculum. In Smith, Babcock saw a heaven-sent opportunity to do what few small colleges had up to that time done — introduce the study of modern foreign languages. Every college then demanded of every student the pursuit of Latin and Greek, but except for the larger and much older colleges, like Yale, Harvard and Princeton, only a few small colleges — notably Dartmouth and Bowdoin — had introduced any study of French or German.<\/p>\n
At first that introduction at Colby was very modest indeed. The 26 year old pastor of the Baptist Church taught just one term of French and one of German. In those days the college year was divided into three terms of approximately twelve weeks each. Surely no one could learn very much French or German. while also pursuing other studies, in twelve short weeks, or even twenty-four. But at least it was a start, and a very early start in the teaching of what has now become the second largest department at Colby College — Modern Foreign Languages, which for the past quarter of a century has been under the competent direction of Professor John Franklin McCoy. The patriotic hymn “America” was written before its author came to Waterville.<\/p>\n
Many years later, in a letter to Scott Paradise of Phillips Andover Academy, he told how it came to be written. “America was written in my room at Mrs. Hitching’s boarding house in Andover. I was looking over a collection of German music assembled by William C. Wordbridge. who had just completed a tour \u00b7of inspection of German schools, and was urging the adoption of music into the American school curriculum.”<\/p>\n
Wordbridge had turned his collection to the Boston composer, Lowell Mason, who had asked young Smith, already recognized for his knowledge of German, to translate the German verses that accompanied some of the tunes. or write original verses for them.<\/p>\n
Glancing through the collection. Smith was impressed by a tune that he found both simple and spirited. He noted that the German words were patriotic, and as he later informed Mr. Paradise, “I instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own to the same tune. Seizing a scrap of paper, I put upon it, within half an hour, the verses substantially as they still stand.”<\/p>\n
Young Smith quietly slipped his new words in among some translations he had made of other hymns, and returned the collection to Composer Mason, dismissing the whole business from his mind.<\/p>\n
A few months later, as he was walking past the Park Street Church in Boston, much to his surprise Smith heard children’s voices singing the words he had written. Lowell Mason had been so impressed by Smith’s adaptation of the old German tune that he had taught the old music with the new words to a Sunday School choir he was training at Park Street, and it was a rehearsal that Smith heard as he passed by. A few days later, on July 4, 1832 — the 56th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – the words of “America” were first sung in public, and they have been sung in every American city, town and hamlet ever since.<\/p>\n
The words and music of “America” first saw public print in a children’s song book called the “Juvenile Lyre”. The original manuscript is said to be at the Harvard University library, but Smith himself made so many copies in his own handwriting that it is difficult to tell just which is original. One copy Smith gave to the library of Colby College.<\/p>\n
Since a number of Revolutionary soldiers were still living, and especially since our second war with Great Britain had ended only 22 years before Smith wrote the hymn, he quite naturally received criticism when it was discovered that to the same German tune had been applied the words of the British national anthem, “God Save the King”. When Smith’s attention was called to the fact, his answer was much like that of Samuel Johnson when a woman asked him how he could ever make such a mistake as to define, in his dictionary, the word “pastern” as meaning the knee of a horse.<\/p>\n
Johnson answered “Ignorance, madame, sheer ignorance”. Samuel Francis Smith simply said he had never heard anyone sing “God Save the King”. He was quite ignorant of the fact that he had used for his American patriotic hymn the same tune.<\/p>\n
The fact is that the tune was very old. During Napoleon’s time, a few years before Smith took it up, the tune had been used for patriotic songs in English, German and Russian. Its existence has been traced as far back as 1700, and it may be a full century older than that, in <\/em>spite of the fact that several musical historians attribute it to Henry Carey, about 1740. As a matter of fact, both musically and poetically, Smith always considered his “America” inferior to two other hymns that he wrote, and which are found in most Protestant hymnals to this day. They are “The Morning Light is Breaking” and “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds”.<\/p>\n In 1895, when Colby College celebrated its 75th anniversary, Samuel Francis Smith was already in his 87th year, but he was still alert enough both physically and mentally to compose a special hymn for that occasion. That anniversary hymn by the author of “America” is still sung every year at the baccalaureate service on Mayflower Hill.<\/p>\n It is interesting to bring to light a few facts about Samuel Francis Smith’s eight years in Waterville, besides his teaching at the college. In fact that teaching was his avocation, a side line. His real vocation was the ministry, and it was as pastor of the Baptist Church that he made his deep impression upon the community. The young pastor had been here only eight months when he took time off to go to Haverhill to claim his bride on September 16, 1834. So it came about that Mary White, granddaughter of a chaplain in George Washington’s army, began her married life as Mrs. Mary White Smith in the Kennebec River town of Waterville, Maine.<\/p>\n It was Samuel F. Smith who first gave continuous attention to the religious needs at Ten Lots, which in his day was a part of the large town of Waterville. There he conducted a spiritual revival, bringing more than 30 persons in that community into the membership of his church.<\/p>\n Next to Colby College, the educational institution that I know best is Hebron Academy, for there I spent my first seven years as a teacher. It therefore interested me to discover that when Hebron’s fine classroom building, Sturtevant Hall, was dedicated in 1891, the exercises closed with the singing of a hymn written es<\/strong>pecially for the occasion by Samuel Francis Smith. As the Baptist historian, Dr. Henry Burrage, related the event: “Dr. Smith, though 82 years old, had lost none of his appreciation of music, none of his ability to write memorable verse. His Hebron hymn was the outstanding feature of the dedication.”<\/p>\n What was religious life in Waterville like when the author of “America” lived here? There were only three organized churches: the Baptist, the Universalist and the Congregationalist. The cluster of houses between Elm Street and the river bank was still called Ticonic Village. Crommett’s Mills, the settlement near the present site of the pumping station on Western Avenue, was considered almost a separate village. There were only a few scattered buildings on the the new College Street, between what is now Post Office Square and the old campus of Colby. The railroad did not reach Waterville until seven years after Smith had left the community.<\/p>\n Travel was by longboat on the river, by rattling stage coach over crude roads, or on horseback. In such a community there labored ardently and successfully for eight years the young man who wrote “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.<\/p>\n Year: 1963<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #577, Broadcast on May 19, 1963<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[796,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}