Who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States?

Francis Julius Bellamy was born on May 18, 1855 in Mount Morris, New York. His family was deeply involved in the Baptist church and they moved to Rome, New York when Bellamy was only 5. Here, Bellamy became an active member of the First Baptist Church; which his father was minister of until his death in 1864. He attended college at the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York and studied theology and was part of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity.

As a young man, he became a Baptist minister and, influenced by the vestiges of the Second Great Awakening, began to travel to promote his faith and help his community. Bellamy's travels brought him to Massachusetts. It was there that he penned the "Pledge of Allegiance" for a campaign by the "Youth's Companion;" a patriotic circular of the day. Bellamy "believed in the absolute separation of church and state" and did not include the phrase "one nation under God" within his original pledge.

Francis Bellamy spent most of the last years of his life living and working in Tampa, Florida. He died there on August 28, 1931 at the age of 76. His cremated remains were brought back to New York where they were buried in a family plot in a cemetery in Rome.