Lyrics
There's a church in the valley by the wildwood,
No lovelier spot in the dale;
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.
Come to the church in the wildwood,
Oh, come to the church in the vale;
No spot is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.
Oh, come to the church in the wildwood,
To the trees where the wild flowers bloom;
Where the parting hymn will be chanted,
We will weep by the side of the tomb.
How sweet on a clear Sabbath morning,
To list to the clear ringing bell;
Its tones so sweetly are calling,
Oh, come to the church in the vale.
From the church in the valley by the wildwood,
When day fades away into night,
I would fain from this spot of my childhood
Wing my way to the mansions of light.
Public domain hymn text (1857). Words and music by William S. Pitts.
The Story Behind the Hymn
William S. Pitts wrote 'The Church in the Wildwood' in 1857 while traveling by stagecoach through Bradford, Iowa, where he passed a wooded grove that struck him as an ideal, though at the time entirely imaginary, spot for a small country church.
At the moment he wrote the song, no such church actually stood in that grove. Pitts composed both the melody and lyrics describing a building that existed only in his own mind, sketched purely from the setting's natural beauty.
Several years later, in 1862, a real congregation in Bradford began constructing an actual church very close to the spot Pitts had described, and, once informed of his earlier song, they built it to match his lyrics as closely as possible, including painting it brown.
That remarkable sequence, a building constructed to match a song rather than a song written to describe an existing building, is fairly unusual in hymn history, and it gave the finished church, still standing today in what is now Nashua, Iowa, its enduring popular name: the Little Brown Church in the Vale.
The song itself, apart from that unusual backstory, is a simple hymn of nostalgic invitation, built around childhood memory and the sound of a church bell calling worshippers to a specific, beloved, physical place rather than describing heaven or abstract doctrine.
Its plain, singable melody and gentle, sentimental lyrics made it broadly popular well beyond the church that eventually embodied it, and it became a widely recorded American folk and gospel standard throughout the twentieth century.
The Little Brown Church in Iowa remains an active wedding and worship venue today, drawing visitors specifically because of the song, a rare case where a hymn did not merely describe a beloved building but quite literally called one into existence.
