The basement of the Grace Church in Newark is catacomb-like, with a narrow stone tunnel that runs almost a city block long. There are a few musty rooms down there, and much of the Anglican Catholic parish's history is stacked among discarded furniture, old hymnals and dismantled organ keyboards and pipes.

As years turned into decades and decades turned into a century, the piles grew.

Some of the most important stuff - the original church registry from 1848, for example - is kept safe in the office of Brent J. Bates, the rector since 2011.

But one very important piece of church history is missing, and Bates believes it is there, somewhere, because, well, everything else is.

Bates and the church's new music director, James Hopkins, are making a concerted effort to find the 124-year-old original sheet music to a composition called "Materna," written by church organist Samuel Augustus Ward, who died in 1903.

Ward wrote the music to accompany the words of "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem," an ancient hymn with Latin roots.

But somewhere along the line -- no one knows exactly why or how -- someone decided to marry Ward's "Materna" to Katherine Lee Bates' 1895 poem "America" to give birth to "America the Beautiful."

It's a strange marriage, indeed. Bates' ode was inspired by a trip to Colorado and a wagon climb to Pike's Peak. Ward's tune came to him on a ferry ride from Coney Island and was perfected in the choir room of the church on Broad Street in Newark. Still, they were joined together to create the song regarded as the country's second national anthem.

When Brent Bates (no known relationship to Katherine Lee Bates) took over the church in 2011, he inherited an architectural gem and historic landmark, but had to deal with several "mundane" problems, like a leaky roof and puddles in the basement.

One lurking problem was the deterioration of the lead in the large stained-glass window over the north side entrance of the church. The window was installed in the 1920s as a memorial to former Newark Mayor Thomas Lynch Raymond.

"The window is based on the 'Te Deum,' (which is an early hymn of praise)'' said Hopkins, 26, a New York City native who graduated from the Westminster Choir College in Princeton and the Cleveland Institute of Music.

When the window was dismantled last August, Brent Bates said it fueled his understanding of the church's rich history in Newark. The city is celebrating its 350th Anniversary this year and the Anglican Church has had a presence almost from the start.

"There is so much history here and we are a part of it," the 39-year-old rector said.

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Where Trinity & St. Philip's Cathedral stands today at Broad and Rector Streets, Newark Anglicans built their first church in 1743. It was used as a hospital during George Washington's retreat across New Jersey, and skirmishes with the pursuing British left the church so badly damaged a new one had to be built. The church on that site dates back to 1810.

The Grace Church was opened a few decades later as a more traditional "Anglo-Catholic Church," said Bates while explaining the nuances of the slightly different Episcopalian liturgies. "We're more aligned to the early Catholic liturgy."

Ward was born in Newark and became the church organist in 1880. Two years later, he wrote the tune to "Materna." Legend has it that it happened on a steamship ride from Coney Island and he was so inspired he scribbled the notes on the starched cuff of his travel companion.

Eleven years later, in 1893, Katherine Lee Bates took a summer sabbatical from her teaching job at Wellesley College and headed west. Her diary of the trip included descriptions of "waves" of wheat fields and the "purple" Rockies.

The finished poem was printed two years later in a Boston newspaper on the Fourth of July.

There are several versions of how words and tune came together. One story says it was the idea of a college president from Massachusetts. Another says it was a Baptist minister from Rochester. But somehow it was published for the first time in 1910, and the rest is history - American and Newark.

Ward didn't live to see his tune become an iconic piece of patriotic music. He died in 1903.

When Hopkins took over as music director of the church in November, he was aware of Ward's "America the Beautiful" legacy, and as one of the most influential hymnists of his time.

But when he began to look into the nooks and crannies of the choir room and church basement, he started to believe the original music had to be there.

It's just a matter of finding it.

There are 18 wooden cabinets in the choir room filled with accordion files of sheet music. There is a vault filled with other important artifacts. Then there are the basement rooms, where the church furnace keeps the heat hovering near boiler room temperatures and the smell of mildew permeates the air. In those rooms, stuck under old organ pipes, are trunks that have yet to be opened.

"It's here, I'm sure," Hopkins said. "It would be nice to have it."

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.