Phoebe Palmer Knapp

Phoebe Palmer Knapp (March 9, 1839 - July 10, 1908) is primarily remembered as the composer of the tune for Fanny Crosby's text Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. In the well-known story of the song's creation, the tune came first, and then Crosby knew exactly what the first line should be.

Much of the biographical information known about Knapp has been derived from her connection with the much-more famous Fanny Crosby.  The two women were close friends and Knapp and her husband often provided financial support to Fanny.  Phoebe believed that Fanny's publishers, Biglow & Main, had not dealt fairly with her as they paid her a flat sum for all rights to each song they published (some sources say as low as $3 apiece) rather than allowing her to copyright her material and receive royalties (as Knapp's husband did for Phoebe's tunes).  The people at Biglow & Main strongly objected to Knapp's assertions, and apparently described her as "interfering" and "overbearing" in private correspondence. At any rate, Crosby was eventually given more favorable terms from the publisher.

Phoebe Knapp was also a social activist for several charitable causes, which she supported from the family fortune.  She once claimed that she 'care(d) more for the active movements of the world of society than for spiritual abstraction.'

The text of today's gospel song is not by Crosby, but by Mary Dagworthy James, who was a colleague of Knapp's mother, Phoebe Worrall Palmer, in the Methodist Holiness movement.

Wondrous words! how rich in blessing!
Deeper than th’unfathomed sea;
Broader than its world of waters,
Boundless, infinite and free.
Higher than the heav’ns above,
Is that everlasting love!
Higher than the heav’ns above,
Is that everlasting love!

Weary spirits, sad with toiling,
’Mid the sorrows of life’s way -—
Feel their heavy burdens lightened,
As they journey day by day.
How with quickened steps they move,
Cheered by everlasting love;
How with quickened steps they move,
Cheered by everlasting love.

In that house of many mansions,
God prepares a place for thee,
Where there are no clouds or tempests,
Where God is, there thou shalt be—
All the untold bliss to prove,
Of that everlasting love;
All the untold bliss to prove,
Of that everlasting love.

Mary Dagworthy James, 1878; alt.
Tune: EVERLASTING LOVE (8.7.8.7.7.7.7.7.)
Phoebe Palmer Knapp, 1878

Phoebe Knapp died of a stroke in 1908 while staying at the Mansion House, a resort hotel in Poland Springs, Maine.




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