Background
Samuel was born on October 21, 1808 in Boston, Massachussets, United States, the son of Samuel and Sarah (Bryant) Smith.
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Samuel was born on October 21, 1808 in Boston, Massachussets, United States, the son of Samuel and Sarah (Bryant) Smith.
He graduated from the Eliot School and from the Boston Latin School, receiving at the latter in 1825 both the Franklin medal and a prize medal for a poem. He entered Harvard College in what proved to be one of its most distinguished classes. His studies for the ministry were pursued at Andover Theological Seminary, where he was graduated in 1832.
During his studies Smith began to translate the articles for the Encyclopaedia Americana, edited by Francis Lieber. During the latter part of his course in the seminary he was asked by Lowell Mason to translate or compose verses for a song book to be used in schools.
Among the tunes placed in his hands was one which especially appealed to him. "Being pleased with its simple and easy movement, " he later wrote, "I glanced at the German words, and seeing that they were patriotic, instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own to the same tune. Seizing a scrap of waste paper, I put upon it, within half an hour, the verses substantially as they stand to-day". This hymn, beginning "My country, 'tis of thee, " was first published in Mason's The Choir (1832). It speedily was popularly adopted as the national hymn, a status never needing the support of political action, but maintained by force of sentiment. Smith attained fame by this one enduring poem, but his career was otherwise productive and influential.
Ordained to the Baptist ministry on February 12, 1834, he had two pastorates at important educational centers. The first of these was at Waterville, 1833-42, where he was also professor of modern languages in Waterville College (now Colby); the second, at Newton Center, Massachussets, which was his home from January 1842. From 1842 to 1848, in addition to his pastoral work, he edited The Christian Review.
In 1854 Smith resigned his church at Newton Center and became editorial secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union. He wrote much both in verse and prose. While most of the former lacked distinction, it was the outpouring of a simple, wholesome idealism, as is suggested by the title of his collected poetry, Poems of Home and Country (1895). "The Morning Light is Breaking" became one of the most widely sung missionary hymns, and his poem, "The Lone Star, " 1868, is generally conceded to have saved the Telugu mission at Nellore, India, and a dramatic reference to it in 1925 led, in a crisis, to the strengthening of the Baptist missionary efforts in the Orient.
He also edited, with Baron Stow, The Psalmist (1843), which for more than thirty years was the hymn book most widely used by Baptists. The April before his death, in recognition of his authorship of "America, " a great public celebration was held in Boston.
He died suddenly in a train at the railroad station, Boston, as he was on his way to fill a preaching engagement.
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Quotes from others about the person
Professor and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. said about Smoth: "his song will be sung centuries from now, when most of us and our pipings are forgotten. "
On September 16, 1834, he married Mary White Smith of Haverhill, a grand-daughter of Dr. Hezekiah Smith; six children were born to them, one of whom, Daniel Appleton White Smith, went in 1863 as a missionary to Burma and served for forty years as president of the Karen Baptist Theological Seminary.