Miscellany Mondays: Mrs. Hitchings and the writing of "America"
The patriotic song, also known as "My Country 'Tis of Thee," was written in Andover. We know a lot about author Samuel Francis Smith, but what do we know about his landlady Mrs. Hitchings?
The story of Mrs. Hitchings was researched, written, and told by Jane Cairns at the History Center’s 2014 Spring for History event. Part of today’s Miscellany Monday’s story is adapted from Jane’s original story.
Samuel Francis Smith and “America”
Samuel Francis Smith wrote the words to the well-known patriotic hymn “America” in Andover. To this day, no civic event in town is complete without a rousing singing of at least the first two verses of the song. Two lines of the second verse include Smith’s poetic description of Andover, “I love thy rocks and rills, The woods and templed hills….”
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From ev'ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
Samuel Francis Smith was a 23-year-old Andover Theological Seminary student boarding at Mrs. Hitchings’ house at 147 Main Street. In 1832, he returned to the boarding house with musical scores and books loaned to him by the “Father of Church Music” Lowell Mason. Mason had asked Smith to translate some German songs and write some songs of his own, if he so desired.1
Among the tunes he handed Smith was a German patriotic hymn, "God Bless Our Native Land.” When Smith read it, he immediately felt that the United states also needed a stirring national poem.2
Inspiration struck Smith and he wrote the words to the now famous song on a few scraps of paper. The scraps of paper - apparently forgotten - were tucked into a book that Smith later returned to Lowell Mason. A few months later, Smith was amazed to hear his hymn sung at the Fourth of July service at the Boston Sabbath Sunday School at the Park Street Church in Boston.3 Photo4
“In Mrs. Hitchings’ parlor” by Jane Cairns
For much of the past 100+ years, one of the jobs of the History Center has been to serve as one of the Town’s official “Answerer of Questions.” For many years one of the most frequent questions concerned the writing of the song “America.” Specifically, where was the song written?
The evidence often cited was a letter that is, in my opinion, one of the jewels of our collection. Preserved in the History Center’s collection is a letter written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1889 to a friend in Andover that attests to the fact that he wrote the song “in Mrs. Hitching’s parlor.”
But there wasn’t very much written about Mrs. Hitchings. So I started doing a little digging. And what I found was a story that was, to me at least, quite fascinating in the quiet, mostly undocumented way that lots of women’s lives were, in the early years of the republic.
“Mrs. Hitchings” was born Elizabeth “Betsy” Wild in 1783. Her father was a Minute Man. She had a Massachusetts girlhood, and was married in 1810 to sea Captain Benjamin Hitchings. They lived in Charlestown, Massachusetts, but her husband was mostly away at sea. He sailed over the world, but, sadly, he died of disease in 1821 near Batavia, Java in the East Indies.
Elizabeth was 38-years-old when her husband died. She had four children – all under the age of eight. Her husband’s body could not be returned to her – so she put up a stone in Mt. Auburn Cemetery that says “we know not where they have laid him.” And the next thing that we know she did, was to enroll her oldest son - at the age of 9 – at Phillips Academy. Little Benjamin boarded in town, at first, but she and the other children soon followed. Elizabeth and her children joined South Church in 1825 and in the same year, she purchased the house at what is now 147 Main Street.
She apparently began to take in boarders very shortly after moving in. Samuel Smith rented her front parlor in 1829.
This is the period for which we have the most information about her life. One girl in town remembered that Mrs. Hitchings sold handmade paper dolls to the girls in the neighborhood. And she was also known for her orchard of very fine peaches which she shared with the theological students.
But the rest of her story is quite sad.
In 1853, when she was about 65 years old, she was kicked out - “removed from the fellowship” - of South Church, apparently, according to the parish records and to the recollection of one 19th century Andover resident, for the excessive drinking of alcohol.
She died ten years later – in the midst of the Civil War – of tuberculosis, a disease which at the time was believed to give its sufferers a taste for alcohol. She left her house on Main Street to one of her grandsons, as well as a smaller legacy to another grandson who was as she notes in her will at that time “in the Army of the United States.” He was, in fact, with the Maine 25th Infantry that was, just like many of the boys from Andover, manning the defenses of the city of Washington.
But the detail of her life that really gave me pause was something that I came across when I found the deed to her house when the Hitchings family sold the house in 1874.
I saw that, at the time she purchased the house, one of her abutters had been Amos Blanchard – of 97 Main Street (the History Center’s home since 1929). Mrs. Hitchings had been at that time, quite literally, the lady next door. And yet, she has never been included in any of the stories we tell about Andover in the 19th century.
And even more dismaying to me, was the fact that Edward Taylor – the second owner of the Blanchard house – was a member of the church’s “Committee of Discipline.” They were not at this time direct abutters anymore, but still – our own Edward Taylor participated in getting one of his neighbors thrown out of the church.
As I said, it’s a difficult story.
But I can confidently say that our town is no longer a place where a lady living alone – a widow, suffering from a terrible illness – would be knowingly shunned by the community as Elizabeth Hitchings apparently was. The History Center has as our mission the mandate to preserve and tell everyone’s stories – not just those of the prominent or the famous, like Samuel Francis Smith – but also the relatively ordinary like that of Elizabeth Hitchings.
-Jane Cairns
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Thanks for reading!
-Elaine
Juliet Haines Mofford, Andover Massachusetts: Historical Selections from Four Centuries, pages 97-98.
Same
Thank you for digging deep to find people who were often forgotten in our history. I hope this opens the pathway for others to ask the same questions and shine the light on other significant people from our past and assuring future records are inclusive of the many unrecognized people who contribute.
Thank you Jane for your research. Yes, a sad story which adds more depth to understanding America. I sincerely hope we can help those in our town who are troubled as Mrs. Hutchins appeared.