Mapleton borough

Marion Samuel Cree and God Bless America

The Mapleton centennial book of 1966 says Marion Samuel Cree, a native of the town, spent the last 17 years of his life in “a losing battle” to prove he was the song’s author. The book tells his side. Find a Grave gives his birth in Mapleton as March 24, 1895, and his death as November 4, 1957.

The book says Cree worked at the Jessop Steel Company near Washington, Pennsylvania, and often sang the song there. When a newspaper advertisement announced a search for a new national anthem, he sent in his song. Some weeks later, in 1940, the book says, fellow workers told him Kate Smith had introduced it on her radio program the night before. The book says the song was then off the air for a time because of litigation Cree started. With a serious heart condition and short of funds, he came back to Mapleton, arranged to be buried in his home town and told the story of the song to a local merchant. He hoped, the book says, that the cemetery would become famous as the burial place of its author.

The Library of Congress tells it differently. Its pages say Irving Berlin wrote a version of the song in the summer of 1918 at Camp Upton on Long Island, and that the song was introduced on Kate Smith’s CBS radio show on November 11, 1938. The book dates that introduction to 1940. The two Library of Congress pages we read do not mention Cree. The Copyright Office catalog for 1938 lists “God bless America,” words and melody by Irving Berlin, registered as unpublished on October 27, 1938, in the name of Irving Berlin, Inc.

The catalogs also show Cree registering songs in his own name. Entries we read from November 1941 to 1952 include “Sons of Uncle Sammy,” published in New York in 1942, “Mister D. D. T.” in 1945 and “Hallelujah for America” in 1952. The catalog volumes we read, for 1938 through 1957, list no “God Bless America” under his name.

The book says his son, a World War II veteran, worked with him on a song called “My Mother” from the son’s deathbed in the veterans hospital at Aspinwall. The 1949 catalog lists “My mother,” with words by Cree and music by a second Cree, registered December 21, 1948. Find a Grave dates the son’s death to March 29, 1948.

Cree is buried in the Mapleton I.O.O.F. Cemetery. The book describes a marble tablet 3 feet by 6 feet covering his grave, with “God Bless America” cut into it, and a smaller headstone that names him as Chauffeur 1/C in the 462nd Aero Squadron. Find a Grave’s biography says he enlisted in an Army aero squadron in World War I, served in France and was discharged in August 1919.

The essay closes with the words “Many of us here in Mapleton feel that he did,” meaning that he wrote the song. The copyright record lists the song under Irving Berlin’s name. What is known of Cree’s claim comes from the book.

Checked against the record. We read the Mapleton centennial book’s essay on Cree, the two Library of Congress pages on the song and its broadcast, and both Find a Grave memorials. We read the Copyright Office music catalogs for 1938 through 1957 and checked the entries quoted here on the page images. A machine-read search can miss a garbled entry, so the missing “God Bless America” entry under Cree’s name is a finding about the volumes we read, not proof that none exists. The music credit on “My mother” was matched to his son through the family listing on Cree’s Find a Grave memorial. The anthem contest, the 1940 date, the lawsuit, the stone and the talk with the merchant come from the book. The book dates Kate Smith’s introduction of the song to 1940, and the Library of Congress dates her broadcast to November 11, 1938. The story gives both. Still open: the lawsuit has no court record that we found, and federal dockets were not searched, so it is neither confirmed nor ruled out. We have not seen his service card, a death certificate, an obituary, newspaper coverage of the claim, the tablet or the smaller stone. A search of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive found nothing on him, which settles little either way. The Find a Grave transcription spells the rank “Shauffer,” not Chauffeur, and the Find a Grave biography is written by a contributor and is not confirmed elsewhere. A catalog shows what was registered and in whose name, not who wrote a song.

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