While most of us know the song, few are aware that “I Wonder as I Wander” is traceable to a family down its luck in Murphy, N.C., during the Depression and the chance encounter between a ...

“I Wonder As I Wander grew out of three lines of music sung for me by a girl who called herself Annie Morgan,” Niles explained. “The place was Murphy, North Carolina, and the time was July ...

Watch Broadway star Michael Maliakel perform "I Wonder as I Wander," with The Tabernacle Orchestra.

He completed the song later that year and published it soon after in 1934. “I Wonder as I Wander” quickly became a much-beloved Christmas carol worldwide.

John Jacob Niles was mesmerized by the melody and lyrics he heard sung out by the poor daughter of a traveling evangelist. Niles was in Appalachia in 1933 when Annie Morgan sang fragments of a ...