100 Years in America the Beautiful

With great appreciation to Katharine Lee Bates who penned the beloved song America, The Beautiful in 1913.

O beautiful for spacious skies
that welcomed all my kin
who crossed the seas with hopeful dreams
they carried deep within.
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
and bless the modern progeny
within our family tree!

Hungarians with Slavic roots
who left for better lives.
The poor and starving Irishmen
just hoping to survive.
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
and bless the modern progeny
within our family tree!

Ujlakis, Toths and Nemeths, too,
left native Hungary;
remaining there: the Bence branch,
Globleks and clan Nagy*.
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
and bless the modern progeny
within our family tree!

Some Irish folk left earliest:
the famous Cowhey clan.
Seeking success some helped define
the classic “railroad man”.

Donnelly, Foley and Graham, too,
these families joined in
to bring to Pennsylvania
the ways of Irishmen.

America! America! God shed His grace on thee
and bless the modern progeny
within our family tree!

Still others fled from misery.
The famine times were hard
for Tierney, Rogers and McCue.
They sought new lives, though scarred.
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
and bless the modern progeny
within our family tree!

O beautiful immigrant dream
we see after these years
have come and gone. Many good-byes
have brought our eyes to tears.
America! America! Thank God for those brave souls
who crossed the sea to make us free –
they’ve made our country whole!

* The American pronunciation is nah-jee, although Hungarians pronounce this surname more like nuhj.

Thanks to Bill West of West in New England for the inspiration to write this little ditty.