Samuel A. Ward

File:Samuel Augustus Ward.jpg

Samuel Augustus Ward

Samuel Augustus Ward (December 28, 1848 – September 28, 1903) was an American organist and composer. Born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of a shoemaker,<ref name=":3"/> he studied under several teachers in New York and became an organist at Grace Episcopal Church in his home town in 1880. He married Virginia Ward in 1871, with whom he had four daughters.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite book</ref>

He is remembered for the 1882 tune "Materna", which he intended as a setting for the hymn "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem".<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> This was published ten years later, in 1892. In 1903, after Ward had died, the tune was first combined by a publisher with the Katharine Lee Bates poem "America", itself first published in 1895, to create the patriotic song "America the Beautiful." The first book with the combination was published in 1910.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":2">Template:Cite book</ref> Ward never met Bates.<ref name=":3" />

Ward was founder and first director of the Orpheus Club of Newark,<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /> where he died on September 28, 1903.<ref name=":0" /> He is buried in Newark‘s Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Ward was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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