HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Happy Birthday Lyrics
The Happy Birthday song was created by two sisters as early as 1893. Those sisters Patty Smith Hill and Mildred Hill, wrote the song to the tune of Good Morning To All. That song goes:
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.
Patty Smith Hill was born in 1868 in Anchorage, Kentucky, the daughter of a minister who dearly valued education and created the Bellewood Female Seminary. Patty graduated in 1887 as valedictorian from Louisville Collegiate Institute. She was a leader in the progressive education movement of the time and was instrumental in the foundation of the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia University Teachers College. Her education methods were recognized at the Chicago’s World Fair. Patty spent most of her professional life as a professor with the Teacher’s College of Columbia University and served as the director of the Horace Mann School. Patty is best known for writing the lyrics to the Happy Birthday song. Amazingly, it was not until June 12, 1996 that she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame despite writing the most recognized song in the world which has been translated into eighteen different languages.
Mildred Hill had an early career as a teacher but then developed a career in gospel music specializing in Negro spirituals. She was also instrumental in the creation of the progressive education movement and was also honored at the Chicago’s World Fair.
The sisters worked at the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten which explored the ideas being taught by Fredrich Fröbel in Germany at the time including the educational value of play, the causes of child activity, and the individuality of training based on sensory and motor types. At the time the song was written Patty was the principal while Mildred was a teacher. This school was a leader in founding public school kindergartens. The sisters were also instrumental in developing the concepts that the National Association for the Education of Young Children were founded on.
But did the sisters write an original song when they wrote Good Morning to All. The answer lies buried in graves, but the probable answer is no. Very similar song called Happy Greetings to All were published in 1858 in The Book of World Famous Music and Good Night To You All was also published. It is possible that the sisters highly borrowed from these songs to create their own songs.
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