Despite an interest in becoming a journalist, Pattee entered the teaching profession, first at a New Jersey grammar school.

James A. Beaver, former Pennsylvania governor and then-president of the Board of Trustees declared the tune would be Penn State College's official song after it was sung at an alumni dinner in 1901.

[1][2] As an American literary historian, Pattee's earliest predecessor was John Neal, whose essays in Blackwood's Magazine he collected and published in 1937 in their first bound edition, American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824–1825).

[4] Following his retirement from his post as Penn State's professor of American literature, Pattee joined the faculty of Rollins College in Florida.

[1] Pattee was married twice, to Anna Lura Plumer and Grace Gorrell Garee, and had one daughter—Sarah Lewis Pattee—from his first marriage.