Children at Park Street Church sing Smith's new hymn to a British royal tune

In 1831, a 22-year-old seminary student named Samuel Francis Smith sat down with a German songbook Lowell Mason had handed him, looking for melodies worth new English lyrics. One tune stopped him: the same music the British sang for "God Save the King." Smith wrote the stanzas beginning "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" in about half an hour. On July 4, 1831, children sang it for the first time at Park Street Church in Boston…