I magine having a birthday with no one singing the song “Happy Birthday to You.” Before the 1900s that’s exactly the way things were. You might have had presents, cake, candles, and cards, but there was no Happy Birthday song to sing, because it had not yet been written.

Then once upon a happy day the famous song was born in a children’s garden.

Impossible, you say? Grow a song in a garden? Not impossible at all for a most unusual family that lived in a most unusual home at the time of the Civil War. . . .

One long-ago morning near Louisville, when gas lamps lit rooms and mules pulled street cars, six-yearold Patty Hill gazed in wonder at the tiny bundle of baby and blanket nestled in Mama’s arms.

“Meet your little sister,” Mama smiled at her little girl with golden-red curls, and at the baby born with the morning, as new to the day as the sun rising to the children’s tower-playroom above.

It was a magical place, the tower room overlooking Bellewood, the family’s Kentucky home. The tower had eight sides, one for each member of William and Martha Hill’s growing family: Papa, Mama, Mildred, Mary, Wallace, Patty, Archibald, and now baby Jessica!

Reverend Hill had built the chapel tower when he founded Bellewood, his school to instruct young women of the South. He believed, most unusually for steamboat days, an educated woman need not marry to have a home.

It was Martha Hill who filled the playroom with boards, boxes, bricks, and barrels for her children to build big dreams. At a time when children were made to work in factories, Martha believed that play was a child’s most important work, the way to discover the world.

All day long Martha sang helpful little songs to keep learning and tasks fun, even tasks not so fun! When washing Patty’s long curls in a tub, Mama sang:

down, down, down, daughter, down you go—into the water . . .

Soon Mildred, like Mama, made up little melodies and Patty wrote simple poems.

Then one sad day in 1874, not even Mama’s songs could dry the children’s tears as they said goodbye to Pee Wee, their beloved pony. Pee Wee was off to a new home because the Hill family was leaving Bellewood forever. Reverend Hill was to become president of a college in faraway Missouri.

“Trading memories for new dreams,” Martha gently explained to the children as Pee Wee’s train pulled away.

Hopes sprouted as high as cornfields in Missouri, until Reverend Hill’s health grew frail. One Christmas day the children gave him a book with a ring of stars on a blue cover. “How the stars light the world! How will you light the world when grown?” he asked.

Reverend Hill died too soon to know. Seven heavy hearts returned to Kentucky as lost as coal smoke at night.

“Welcome is the best dish you can serve at the table,” Martha sighed, resettling in Louisville in 1878. Like a song without notes, life and the cupboards were empty without Papa.

Martha was nearly penniless. She took in boarders. Blessedly, the children could now finish school.

When Patty graduated she thought of Papa’s question: How will you light the world when grown? By now Mildred had become a piano teacher and a talented composer. Patty wondered what she might do. Then one day she read a notice in the Louisville Courier Journal:

A Free Kindergarten

Miss Bryan returns to her Kentucky Home to Instruct Poor Children

She will also Train Young Ladies for Teaching Methods of the Celebrated System

Patty invited Miss Bryan for tea to hear how Kindergarten was the idea of a German man named Fredrick Froebel. He saw school as a garden—the teacher as the gardener and the children as the flowers that learn best by growing naturally. But what to call this new idea? Not schooling, it was really more like child-gardening. “Kindergarten is the name!” he cried, for kinder is German for children.

Patty became the youngest of six students in Louisville’s first training class for kindergarten teachers!

Each morning Miss Patty gathered students from poor tenement homes. She washed little hands and faces at school and put children in clean clothes. Then as taught to do, Patty marched the children into a big circle to teach the day’s topic. She looked from child to child, until one boy said for all, “Teacher, who are you talking to anyhow?”

Patty then tried the children in smaller groups to learn their news. Viola said she couldn’t skip very well because her new shoes didn’t know how to yet. Tommy was sad because he couldn’t find his cookie. But he’d eaten it! Asked to put on her thinking cap, Eloise said, “Not me! I’m putting on my knowing cap.”

Patty put on her knowing cap. To teach a child she must reach the child, but the way was through the child’s own play. It was the children of Bellewood who built dreams from boards. Mama and Papa added only wise freedom and the help of a little song.

“Eureka!” Patty cried, seeing what was missing for the Kindergarten—songs to teach by play. Patty believed she and Mildred could write songs that kept the child in the music. She wrote four lines to welcome a child to his playroom of friends each morning.

Good Morning to you, Good Morning to you, Good Morning dear children, Good Morning to all!

She asked Mildred to write a melody that was simple and easy enough for any child to sing. But simple was far from easy, Mildred knew. Little voices struggled with notes too high or low. Folk tunes offered a small vocal range, but it was the street sellers’ songs—strawberries like cherries, fresh off the vine—that filled Mildred’s mind with easy tunes doing big work without fuss or fancy.

At night Jessica’s young voice tested Mildred’s different melodies with Patty’s words for her sisters to hear. The next day, the children sang the tunes in school, yet something was still missing.

One night, Mildred, who shared Papa’s love of the heavens, met with friends who viewed the sky through telescopes. “Send me some Milky Way!” they laughed when departing. Mildred heard the lightness in their laughter and put the bright notes into her melody. Like stars.

At last her tune formed using simple notes as close as a child’s footsteps. It held happiness.

Once again Jessica sang for her sisters. Excitedly they asked Jessica to try other words with the tune of “Good Morning to All” to see if the new notes fit many occasions.

“Try Happy Vacation to You,” Patty said.

“Happy Journey,” said Mary.

“Happy New Year. Happy Christmas,” urged Mildred.

Jessica sang all their ideas.

“What would you like to hear, Mama?” Patty asked. Martha smiled at her daughters. Was it not so long ago Patty was a little girl with golden-red curls, and Jessica, the baby born with the morning? Each child was a song of life in her memory garden with William. “Try Happy Birthday,” laughed Mama. So Jessica sang the famous little song in Louisville for the first time at 1109 Second Street.

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear children, Happy Birthday to you.

Still the true test was in the kindergarten. The next day the song followed Patty and Mildred to school like Mary’s Little Lamb. These notes the children learned with ease. Mildred fingered piano keys as the children’s voices welcomed another day of play to Miss Patty’s kindergarten. When the singing stopped they heard: “Eureeeeekkkka!” Patty and Mildred’s song was finally born. One part words, one part melody, one part happy child.

And as soon as the first birthday celebration in school came along, well, you know the famous little song the children sang.