Katharine Lee Bates

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Katharine Lee Bates bigraphy, stories - American poet and songwriter

Katharine Lee Bates : biography

August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929

Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was an American songwriter. She is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem "America the Beautiful". She popularized "Mrs. Santa Claus" through her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride (1889).

Relationship with Katharine Coman

Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College school Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman’s death in 1915. In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, a collection of poems written "to or about my Friend" Katharine Coman, some of which had been published in Coman’s lifetime.Google Books: , (E.P. Dutton, 1922), quote viii, accessed January 6, 2012