SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 11/21/1891 - HFSID 29737

SAMUEL F. SMITH
Samuel F. Smith sends an autograph letter of thanks.
Autograph Letter signed: "S. F. Smith", 1½p conjoined sheets, 5x8 lined sheet.Newton Center, Massachusetts, 1891 November 21. To Mr. D. P. Secor. In full: "My dear friend, I thank you for your repeated favors, all which are pleasant mementos of our agreeable intercourse that summer in Bridgeport. I thank you also for the honor your Society has conferred upon me in making me one of their members. I shall ever rejoice in their prosperity and make their rooms a Mecca, towards which I shall pray and to which I shall go from time to time with reverent feet. The Secretary has very kindly notified me of my election. I do not forget that I promised you some contributions to your collection which shall come in due time but the engagements have hitherto fragmented. Your programs of lecture is very interesting. My daughter Mrs. Caude values highly the privilege of attending. I wish I was nearer you that I might do the same. The long cold winter is before us. I pray you be careful of your health, that your valuable life may be long preserved. Very cordially yours," After a visit to Germany in 1831, 23-year-old theological student Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895), impressed that German children started their school day by singing a hymn, wrote a patriotic hymn using a simple German melody. Coincidentally, the melody was the same as that of the British national anthem, "God Save the King". Smith jotted down the complete hymn on a piece of scrap paper within half an hour, and the result, "America", was first sung at a children's celebration in Boston's Park Street Church on July 4, 1832. George Gershwin used Smith's phrase "Of Thee I Sing" as the title of his 1932 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted the entire first stanza as he concluded his "I have a dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Fold creases not near signature. Fine and interesting.