What Inspired a Falmouth Woman to Write ‘America the Beautiful’

Independence Day is just around the corner, and patriotic tunes are probably still fresh in your mind. One of my favorites is Ray Charles’ recording of “America the Beautiful,” a song deeply connected to Massachusetts.

“America the Beautiful” was written by Katharine Lee Bates, a teacher and writer from Falmouth, Massachusetts, born August 12, 1859.

Bates’ father died when she was just a few weeks old and she was raised by her mother and an aunt.

The National Park Service (NPS) wrote: “Being educated women themselves, they (Bates’ mother and aunt) sent Bates to high school and then to Wellesley College.” Bates graduated from Wellesley in 1880 and began teaching nearby.

A noted author of poetry and children’s storybooks, Bates used the prize money to finance a trip to England, where she studied at Oxford University for two years. Upon her return to Massachusetts in 1891, Bates became a professor of English literature at Wellesley College, where she earned a master’s degree.

In the summer of 1893, Bates was teaching English at the Colorado Summer School in Colorado Springs. The NPS said Bates and several teaching friends climbed Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains in a mule-drawn wagon.

Back at his hotel, Bates wrote the first draft of a poem that would become the song “America the Beautiful.”

“From her perch atop one of the majestic purple mountains, Bates could look out over the prairies and wheat fields of Kansas,” the NPS wrote. “She immortalized them in her song as ‘amber waves of grain.’”

Bates was in a committed relationship with Katharine Coman for nearly three decades. Coman was a history professor at Wellesley College. The couple shared a house in Wellesley.

Katharine Lee Bates died on March 28, 1929, in Wellesley. She was 69 years old.

Bates is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Falmouth, Massachusetts. A statue of her stands outside the Falmouth Public Library.