KATHARINE LEE BATES

'Katharine Lee Bates', (August 12 1859 – March 28, 1929), is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem "America the Beautiful".
Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The daughter of a Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied. She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. These arrangements were sometimes called "Boston marriages" or "Wellesley marriages," which, however derisive the terms may be, did not indicate a knowledge or even a presumption of the sexual practices of those to whom the terms were applied. Most often, such "marriages" were for convenience and companionship of unmarried women.
In Bates' case, however, there is strong evidence that the relationship shared between her and Katharine Coman was an intimate one. Though there is no direct evidence of sexual interaction, the romantic nature of the relationship is most especially apparent in Bates' limited edition book of memorial poetry, titled '', in which she writes, "My love, my love, if you could come once more/From your high place/I would not question you for heavenly lore/But, silent, take the comfort of your face."
Although Katherine Lee Bates is widely acknowledged as a lesbian, there are raging controversial debates about the prudence and validity of exposing evidence of homosexuality in historical figures. The "forcing out of the closet" of patriotic figures like Bates is a particularly sensitive issue.
The first draft of "America the Beautiful" was hastily jotted in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Bates spent teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later she remembered
:"One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. 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."
The words to her one famous poem first appeared in print in ''The Congregationalist'', a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the ''Boston Evening Transcript'', November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.
The hymn has been sung to other music, but the familiar tune that Ray Charles (1930-2004) delivered is by Samuel A. Ward (1847–1903), written for his hymn "Materna" (1882).
Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and children's books. Her family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society.
Bates is credited with creating Mrs. Claus in the poem ''Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride'' from the collection ''Sunshine and other Verses for Children'' (1889).
Katharine Lee Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 28 1929, aged 69. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

Contents

External links

External links

★

★ The Origin of American Christmas Myth and Customs

★ A site devoted to Miss Bates and Falmouth, Massachusetts.

★

★ Biography and Poetry of Bates, part of a Series poet's biographies.