Singing Christmas Tree upon the location. Since then, the singing Christmas tree concept has spread to Canada, the Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland and Sri Lanka. The most attended tree takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, with 60,000 attendees in 2007. The first Christmas trees came to the United States in the 1740s from Moravian (now part of the Czech Republic) settlers. In 1851, the first commercial tree lot in the United States was set up in New York City. President of the United States Franklin Pierce set up the first Christmas tree in the White House in 1856. Artificial trees were first developed in
Franklin Pierce Rice (later to become the Worcester Historical Museum), Rice was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1906. Rice was also a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the Worcester Natural History Society (serving as director from 1894 to 1909), and the Bunker Hill Monument Association. Rice died on 3 January 1919 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Franklin Pierce Rice was a direct patrilineal descendant of Edmund Rice, an English immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony, as follows: Franklin Pierce Rice Franklin Pierce Rice (1852–1919) was a self-taught printer and publisher who transcribed and printed and preserved vital records from Massachusetts