Samuel Francis Smith

Baptist minister and hymnwriter Samuel Francis Smith (1808-1895) was born today in Newton, Massachusetts (where he is also buried). Ordained to the ministry in 1834, he was pastor for several churches in Massachusetts and Maine over his long career.

While still a student at Andover Theological Seminary, he began to write poetry and other literary work to support himself. In 1831, his friend, composer and editor Lowell Mason, gave him a songbook in German and asked him to either translate or rewrite some of the texts so that Mason could include them in his musical publications. Smith was supposedly interested a particular tune in the book, which accompanied a German national song and decided to write an American national song for it. This was to be his most lasting legacy: My country, 'tis of thee, first sung at the Park Street Church in Boston for a children's service on July 4, 1831. It's said that he was unaware that the tune had already been used for the English national anthem, God save the King.

Smith would go on to write many more hymns, which have not yet all been documented online at the usual sites. The most complete list probably appears in The Hymn, the journal of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. Baptist hymnologist David W. Music's article The Hymns of Samuel Francis Smith in The Hymn volume 59 number 2 (Spring 2008) includes an extensive list of 193 hymns (and other texts which might have been sung as hymns) as well as a detailed bibliography. He also acknowledges that there may well be other hymns by Smith that have not been discovered yet.

Smith was also one of the editors of The Psalmist (1843), a hymnal which quickly became widely used in Baptist churches. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Dictionary of Hymnology by John Julian still described it as "the most creditable and influential of the American Baptist collections to the present day."

Today's hymn by Smith is far less known and does not seem to have appeared in any American hymnals.  Earlier this year I was working at the First Baptist Church in Needham, MA, and discovered this text in one of their written histories. It was sung there on June 5, 1872 at the dedication service for their new building (which they still occupy). At this time, Smith was the pastor of the Needham church, which was not far from his home in Newton. Somewhat surprisingly, the tune they sang in 1872 was documented, and so the congregation in 2018 sang this hymn on the first Sunday in June to commemorate their building's dedication, as it had been sung in 1872.

Come, O divine Shekinah, come,
With glory fill this new abode;
Come, in our waiting souls there's room!
Display thy pow'r, a present God.

Come to our shrine, a God of love,
Come as a God of love and pow'r;
Refresh thy people from above
As dews refresh the drooping flow'rs.

Come as a spring and fount of grace,
Our temple with thy light adorn,
As crimson rays thy glory trace
The gorgeous rising of the morn.

Come as a dove, with wings of peace,
The sad to cheer, the bruised to heal;
The wounds that sin has made, to ease,
The covenant of our life, to seal.

Dispolay thy pow'r, a present God,
Come, in our waiting souls there's room;
With glory fill this new abode,
Come, O divine Shekinah, come!

Samuel Francis Smith, 1865 (?)
Tune: HOLLEY (L.M.)
George Hews, 1835

Shekinah is not a word many hymn lovers have encountered before. I have seen it in a few contremporary texts, but not those of 150 years ago.

In the recorded history of the Needham church, they believe that Smith wrote this text specifically for their dedication service in 1872. However, it appears in David Music's list of Smith's hymns as having been used in a similar service in Taunton, MA, on October 10, 1865, because their dedication service was published that same year. Was that then the first time it was sung, or did Smith perhaps write it even earlier, for another dedication that hasn't yet been documented? There are probably hundreds of similar hymns still undiscovered, written by authors both famous and unknown for various local occasions around the country.

Clasping Hands With Distant Ages (Day Two)

Now the joyful Christmas morning,
Breaking o’er the world below,
Tells again the wondrous story
Of the Christ Child long ago.
Hark! we hear again the chorus
Echoing thro’ the starry sky,
And we join the heav’nly anthem,
Glory be to God on high!

Out of every clime and people,
Under every holy name,
Is the everlasting Gospel
Good and glad for aye the same;
So we, in our happy Christmas,
Breathe the universal creed,
Clasping hands with distant ages
All in unity indeed.

Sing aloud, then, hearts and voices!
Shout, O new world, free and strong!
Hail of Light the deathless triumph,
Join the old world’s birthday song —
Glory be to God the Highest!
Peace on earth, good will to all!
’Twas the morning stars that pealed it —
Let the whole world heed the call.

Mary Noel Meigs, 1883; alt.
Tune: HARWELL (8.7.8.7.D.)
Lowell Mason, 1840

The appropriately-named Mary Noel Meigs published this hymn in Sacred Songs for Public Worship (1883), a Unitarian collection edited by Minot Judson Savage. I don't know her entire output, but the handful of her hymns that are listed at the Cyber Hymnal and Hymnary.org are all Christmas-themed.



Seven Years Ago: Good King Wenceslas

Two Years Ago: Saint Stephen

One Year Ago: While shepherds, watching flocks by night

Saint Andrew

The Feast of Saint Andrew traditionally determines the beginning of the Advent season, as the First Sunday in Advent is the one closest to November 30 (etither before or after).  Andrew's name day was placed at the beginning of the church year because he was the first of the twelve disciples.  In John 1:35-42, we read how Andrew heard the call, then recruited his brother Simon, who was given the new name of Peter by Jesus.

Today's hymn for Andrew's feast, from Christopher Wordsworth's The Holy Year (1865), also includes Peter, tying their brotherly connection to a wider message of love. Originally written in ten stanzas, I've adapted it down to a more likely four.

How fair and pleasant is the sight
When kindred hearts agree 
In holy amity and love, 
United, Lord, by thee.

Bright pattern of fraternal love
Today with joy we see,
Saint Andrew, who a brother brought,
Saint Peter, Christ, to thee.

Brothers by nature and by grace, 
Thou loved'st them as thine own;
Brothers united in the cross
And brothers in the crown.

They usher in thine Advent, Lord,
Which saved the world from sin;
For all who would that Advent greet,
Must first with Love begin.

Christopher Wordsworth, 1865; alt.
Tune: EXETER (C.M.)
Lowell Mason, 1823

Wordsworth gives us a footnote in the third stanza of his text here, reminding us that both Andrew and Peter ("Brothers united in the cross") were martyred by crucifixion.



Eight Years Ago: Saint Andrew

One Year Ago: Saint Andrew

Augustus Montague Toplady

Today is the birthday of Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778), author of one very well-known hymn (Rock of ages, cleft for me - found in more than two thousand American hymnbooks alone, as enumerated at Hymnary.org) and several others which have lapsed into obscurity. He has been described as an "Anglican Calvinist," ordained in the Church of England but firmly believing in many of the tenets of the Reformed tradition, founded by John Calvin in the sixteenth century. Years later, he compiled and published Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England (1774).

Toplady became a Christian while attending Trinity College in Dublin, after a sermon by a Methodist lay preacher named James Morris. There were various theological disputes in Methodism at this time, and eventually these were to put Toplady in direct conflict with John Wesley, one of Methodism's founders. During one published exchange, he wrote:

"I do not expect to be treated by Mr. John Wesley with the candour of a gentleman or the meekness of a Christian, but I wish him, for his reputation's sake, to write and act with the honesty of a heathen."

Most, if not all, of Toplady's hymns were eventually gathered into a collection he published, Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Worship (1776). The opinion of them in his day (which persists to our time) was decidedly mixed, which probably explains why he is only remembered for one hymn today. One contemporaneous critic dismissed his hymn texts, summing up his work with the statement: "He is a fervent preacher, not a bard." Perhaps his protracted dispute with John Wesley also had something to do with this reputation.

He contributed to the Gospel Magazine and served for a time as its editor. Today's hymn was published there in December 1774. More than twenty years ago we included this in the hymnal project which I participated in because we liked the fact that it called God by several different names.

Inspirer and Hearer of prayer,

Redeemer and Guardian divine,

My all to your covenant care,

Forever I freely resign.

If you are my Shield and my Sun,

The way brings no terror to me;

When enemies seem to have won,

My Comforter true you will be.

A mighty Protector I have,

Unseen, yet forever at hand;

Unchangeably faithful to save,

Almighty to rule and command.

You smile, and your comforts abound,

Your grace, as the dew, shall descend;

And walls of salvation surround

The soul you delight to defend.

Augustus Montague Toplady, 1774; alt.

Tune: TIMNA (8.8.8.8.)

Lowell Mason, 1841

Toplady died of tuberculosis on August 14, 1778, at the relatively young age of 37.

Something that interests me (but perhaps not many others) is that while this text is written in stanzas of four lines of eight syllables, it isn't really a Long Meter text because the emphasis in each line is on the second syllable rather than the first, so most LM tunes do not fit it. Years ago we matched it to a tune called DONCASTER OLD, but I couldn't find that one online and had to pick a substitute (which took a long time!).



Eight Years Ago: James Montgomery

Six Years Ago: James Montgomery

Two Years Ago: James Montgomery

John Brownlie

Scottish scholar John Brownlie was born today in 1859, in Glasgow. After attending the university there and the Free Church College (now the Edinburgh Theological Seminary), he was licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1884. He served as both associate minister and later senior minister of the Free Church in Portpatrick, where he spent most of his life.

Brownlie believed that the Orthodox churches of "the East" had much to offer the "Western" churches of his day and he is best known for his hymn translations, mostly from Greek sources (though he also translated Latin texts from the Roman Catholic tradition).

In the supplement to the Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) by John Julian, Brownlie's hymns are said to show "all the beauty, simplicity, earnestness, and elevation of thought and feeling which characterize the originals." The following year, Brownlie was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Glasgow University (his alma mater) for his accomplishments in hymnology.

Here on the blog we have already seen his Advent hymn The King shall come when morning dawns, a text for which no Greek original has been traced, apparently an original text by Brownlie. Today's hymn in Brownlie's translation is from Hymns of the Russian Church (1920), and is based in part on well-known scripture verses Matthew 7:7-8. In the introduction to the book (worth a read), Brownlie explains how the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church are one and the same, and how these hymns descended from Greek originals. From the introduction's concluding lines about the hymn texts offered:

"May they be as a gift from a deeply suffering Church to many sad hearts in our own land -- saddened by the events of the cruel war from which we have just emerged... If the comfort which many of them breathe should help to soothe the wounds of our sorrow, the Church from which is proceeds will only be continuing the office which she has so nobly fulfilled to her own suffering people during the past six centuries, and which she herself so sorely needs in these days of oppression and bloodshed."

Ask, and your prayer with arrow's speed
Shall bear to God your present need;
And for your help from heaven shall bring
Love's best, and gracious offering.

Seek, and the grace of God most kind
Your thirsting soul shall surely find;
Light shall break forth, and treasures rare
Shall sparkle round you, everywhere.

Knock, and the gate of God shall spring
Wide, for your soul's free entering,
And in the bliss by pilgrims shared,
You shall receive a place prepared.

Rest in your God, in quietness rest,
God is your Friend, and loves you best;
Heaven has a store, its wealth endures,
Have faith in all God's grace secures.

Greek (date unknown)
tr. John Brownlie, 1920; alt.
Tune: HEBRON (L.M.)
Lowell Mason, 1830

Brownlie also wrote Hymns and Hymnwriters of The Church Hymnary (1899), a companion to The Church Hymnary (1898), a popular book in the Presbyterian and Free churches of Scotland.

It's interesting to note that Brownlie's work in translating Eastern hymns can be seen as a continuation of the work of John Mason Neale, who died today on Brownlie's birthdate in 1866 (and who is commemorated tomorrow on the Episcopal calendar of saints).

Eight Years Ago: The Feast of the Transfiguration

William Channing Gannett

William Channing Gannett was born today in Boston in 1840.  His father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, was one of the founders of the American Unitarian Association, which formalized the earlier separate Unitarian churches into a denominational structure,  His mother, Anna Tilden Gannett (who died when William was two years old), was a student of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a friend of Harriet Martineau.

He graduated from Harvard in 1860 and taught school for a year in Rhode Island, but did not believe that he was particularly good at it.  He was no more convinced that he could succeed in business or in the ministry, but he began studying at Harvard Divinity School.  He left before finishing to work with freed slaves on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, later describing this work as the most significant of his life. He returned to Boston a few years later because his father was in poor health, and eventually completed his studies at the Divinity School.  After graduation, he served churches in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eventually Rochester, New York (his longest tenure: 1889-1908).  He was involved in the social causes of his time: including first abolition and later women's suffrage; Susan B. Anthony was on of his parishioners in Rochester.  Gannett and Anthony worked for years to have women admitted to the University of Rochester, and raised funds toward that campaign, which eventually succeeded.

Gannett wrote many hymns (some of which we have already seen here), and collaborated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer on two influential Unitarian collections: Unity Hymns and Chorals (1880) and The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems (1885).  Both collections were revised and updated by the pair in later years.

He clearly believed in an indwelling God that was accessible to every person; the basis for this hymn as well as some of his others.

O God within, so close to me
That every thought is plain,
Be Rock, be Friend, and Comfort still,
And in your heaven reign!

That heaven is mine -- my very soul!
Your words are sweet and strong;
They fill my inward silences
With music and with song.

They send me challenges to right
And loud rebuke my ill;
They ring my bells of victory,
They breathe my "peace, be still!'"

They ever seem to say "My child,
Why seek me so all day?
Now journey inward to yourself,
And listen on your way."

William Channing Gannett, 20th cent.; alt.
Tune: EXETER  (C.M.)
Lowell Mason, 1823

Gannett the 'poet-preacher,' as a colleague described him, died in Rochester in December 1923, having continued his connection to that congregation as pastor emeritus since his 1908 retirement.

Six Years Ago: William Channing Gannett

Five Years Ago: William Channing Gannett

William Henry Havergal

William Henry Havergal, born today in 1793, may have been one of the people most responsible for the immense surge in hymn singing in England in the middle of the nineteenth century.  He and Henry J. Gauntlett worked to adapt and arrange older melodies, such as psalm tunes and chorales from Germany into the four-part harmonies that we still sing today (much like Lowell Mason was doing in the United States).  He composed a number of original hymn tunes and also wrote hymn texts.

Havergal was ordained in the Church of England in 1816, serving several churches, the longest in Astley, a village in Worcestershire, where he is buried.  

Today's hymn has both a text by Havergal as well as one of his arrangements, adapted from a sixteenth-century German melody.

To praise our Shepherd's care,
His wisdom, love, and might,
Your loudest, loftiest songs prepare,
And bid the world unite.

Supremely good and great,
He tends his earthly fold;
And stoops, though throned in highest state,
The weary to uphold.

He hears their softest plaint, 
Follows them when they roam;
And if one single lamb should faint,
His bosom bears it home.

Kind Shepherd of the sheep,
A faithful flock are we,
And snares and foes are nigh, but keep
The lambs who look to thee.

William Henry Havergal, 19th cent.; alt.
Tune: NARENZA (S.M.)
Catholicum Hymnologium, 1584;
arr. William Henry Havergal, 1847

One of his daughters, Frances Ridley Havergal, followed in his line of work as a writer of hymns and composer of tunes.  Havergal is now mostly remembered for his tunes rather than his texts, while the texts of Frances are most familiar and her tunes are all but unknown.  Following Havergal's death in 1870, Frances edited a collection of his tunes and arrangements which was published in 1871.



Another Commemoration Today: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Seven Years Ago: William Henry Havergal

Four Years Ago: The Confession of Saint Peter

One Year Ago: The Confession of Saint Peter

Lowell Mason

Music educator and composer Lowell Mason (1792-1872) was born today in Medfield, Massachusetts. His parents were choir singers and his father a string player, and young Lowell learned several instruments and studied music both in a singing school and with composer Oliver Shaw. At age 16 he became director of his church choir, and at 18 he conducted the Medfield town band.

However, he did not initially seek out a music career as an adult, first working in a dry goods store in Savannah, Georgia in which he eventually became a partner. At the same time, he served Savannah's Independent Presbyterian Church as organist and Sunday school superintendent. Following the death of his partner in the store in 1817, Mason went into banking as his "real" job while continuing his musical and educational interests on the side.  He founded the Savannah Missionary Society in 1818 and opened the first Sunday school in the country for black children in 1826. 

While continuing as a banker, his musical sideline during the 1820s was arranging hymn tunes from the melodies of European composers, and writing some of his own in similar style, which were tried out on his Savannah congregation. After a few unsuccessful tries at publishing a collection of these tunes, his book came out as The Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music in 1822, in cooperation with that venerable Boston organization. The book was an immediate success, selling more than fifty thousand copies over at least twenty separate editions. Mason returned to Boston, where he was music director at several different churches and eventually led the Handel and Haydn Society.  Over the rest of his lifetime he published at least fifty hymn tune collections. And yet he still kept a job in banking for a few more years.

Mason's arrangements took melodies from European composers and transformed them into four-part hymn tunes. HAMBURG, for example, was from a Benedictus of Vincent Novello, and AZMON from German composer Carl Glaser.  Today's tune, HENDON, which also still appears in hymnals today, is from Swiss Protestant minister and hymn tune composer Henri Abraham César Malan.

Ask me what great thing I know,
That delights and stirs me so?
What the high reward I win?
Whose the name I glory in?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

What is faith’s foundation strong?
What awakes my heart to song?
He who bore my earthly load,
Purchased for me peace with God,
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Who defeats my fiercest foes?
Who consoles my saddest woes?
Who revives my fainting heart,
Healing all its hidden smart?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Who is life in life to me?
Who the death of death will be?
Who will place me on his right,
With the countless hosts of light?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

This is that great thing I know;
This delights and stirs me so;
Faith in him who died to save,
Him who triumphed over the grave:
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Johann Schwedler, 1741; tr. Benjamin H. Kennedy, 1863

Tune: HENDON (7.7.7.7.7.)

H. A. César Malan, 1827; harm. Lowell Mason, 1841

Eventually Mason seems to have been convinced that he could have a full career in music, and left banking to become the first teacher of music in an American public school in 1837, a program that he had developed and for which he won acceptance.  Not long after he became the first superintendent of the music program in all Boston schools.  The program was a success and was copied across the country and even in Europe.

After Mason's success in the musical and educational fields, he came to disparage the singing school movement that had previously been the primary form of musical education in the country (and where he had studied as a child).  The style of the earlier American composers died out, replaced in fashion by European models of composition that were now considered more respectable.

In 2010, a group of Medfield, MA citizens came together to halt the demolition of the Mason family house. They were successful in moving the building to another site and have continued efforts to establish the house as 'a significant historical and educational resource' and to honor the life and career of Lowell Mason.

Seven Years Ago: Lowell Mason

But Mary's Arms Contain Thee Now (Day Five)

All praise to thee, O Jesus Christ,
Clothed in a garb of flesh and blood;
Choosing a manger for thy throne,
While worlds on worlds are thine alone.

Once did the skies before thee bow;
But Mary’s arms contain thee now,
While angels, who in thee rejoice,
Now listen for thine infant voice.

A little child, thou art our guest,
That weary ones in thee may rest;
Humble and lowly is thy birth;
That we may rise to heav'n from earth.

Thou comest in the lonely night
To make us children of the light;
To make us, in the realms divine,
Like thine own angels round thee shine.

All this for us thy love hath done;
By this to thee our love is won;
For this we tune our cheerful lays,
And sing our thanks in ceaseless praise.

Martin Luther, 1535; tr. anonymous, 1858; alt.
Tune: MAINZER (L.M.)
Joseph Mainzer, 1845

This translation of Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ by Martin Luther first appeared anonymously in the Sabbath Hymn Book (1858), published in Massachusetts by Lowell Mason's firm.  Though found in 88 (mostly American) hymnals at the Hymnary.org site, only two of those appear to be Lutheran collections.  Lutheran editors seem to have preferred another translation, All praise to Jesus' hallowed name, by Richard Massie, from his collection titled Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs (1854).

I like this one better, even as a former Lutheran.


P.S. The art above is from a larger painting, William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Song of the Angels (1881)



Six Years Ago: Go, tell it on the mountain

World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day may not (yet) be a liturgical observance in most places, but I believe
that it is marked in an increasing number of ways. It's not possible for any site to
consolidate and list them all, but there are different sites for different countries and
umbrella organizations.  Social media and the internet has made it much easier for 
such organizations to help people plan a local event in the last decade, and in many places 
churches have stepped up to do their part.

Thinking about the day this year I was reminded of a hymn connection from several years
ago.  In 1989 we were just beginning our hymnal project for Metropolitan Community
Church, and sketching out lists of the hymns we wanted to distribute over the next three
years. The worship leaders for the denomination's General Conference to be held that
summer had agreed to use these new resources, endorsing the inclusive and expansive 
language and theology of our texts.  We then received a special request from the Reverend
Elder Nancy Wilson for a hymn that she particularly wanted to be sung at the conference:
Charles Wesley's And are we yet alive.  This hymn was not on our lists at the time (and we
had no former Methodists on our committee who might have suggested it).  Left to our own
devices we might not have encountered it at all.

But in that time and place it expressed something important, the affirmation of a community
in crisis.  When we gathered for worship, either at an annual conference or even week-to-
week in local churches, we knew that we were in the midst of a great struggle -- fightings
without and fears within / Since we assembled last.  It was a significant question: And are
we yet alive, / And see each other's face?

And are we yet alive,
And see each other’s face?
Glory and thanks to Jesus give
For great redeeming grace!

Preserved by power divine
To full salvation here,
Again in Jesus’ praise we join
In Jesus' sight appear.

What troubles have we seen,
What mighty conflicts past,
Fightings without, and fears within,
Since we assembled last!

Yet out of all our God
Hath brought us by great love;
And all along our paths hath trod,
To guard our life above.

Then let us make our boast
Of God's redeeming power,
Which saves us to the uttermost,
Till we can sin no more.

Let us take up the cross
Till we the crown obtain,
And gladly reckon all things loss
So we may Jesus gain.

Charles Wesley, 1749; alt.

Tune: DENNIS (S.M.)

Hans Nageli, 19th cent.
arr. Lowell Mason, 1845

Over time it became more important for many of the the hymns we sang to include two
additional  themes: the life to come (seen here in the final stanza), and the memorialization
of those we loved and lost (see the hymn at the link below). Our churches sang about heaven
with an urgency that the rest of the world did not always comprehend.  We came to under-
stand why the hymnwriters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often concluded their
texts with a stanza about heaven, so that even on Christmas Day, when we sang Once in
royal David's city, the final stanza begins: 

Not in that poor, lowly stable

With the oxen standing by,

We shall see you, but in heaven,

Set at God's right hand on high.

In those earlier times, life expectancy was short (which also inspires Wesley's hymn).  The
hope of a life to come was an important comfort.  Toward the end of the twentieth century
we understood in a profound way the continuing need for that hope.

Five Years Ago:  World AIDS Day

Phebe Hanaford

Phebe Hanaford, born today in 1829, was not only the fourth woman ordained in the United States (in the Universalist Church) but was also an author, activist, poet and hymnwriter.

Born into a Quaker family, she was aware from a young age that women in that tradition were allowed to preach during services, but she tried to put those ideas aside when she married Joseph Hanaford in 1849 and agreed to worship in his Baptist church.  A few years later she learned that Lucy Stone, a prominent activist for abolition and women's rights, was speaking at a local church.  Knowing that her husband would not approve of her attending the lecture, she stayed outside the church but managed to listen anyway.

Following her ordination in 1868, she led churches in the Massachusetts towns of Hingham and Waltham, but when she was called to a Universalist congregation in New Haven, Connecticut, her husband refused to go with her and they separated.  Ellen Miles, a Sabbath school teacher in Phebe's Waltham congregation, accompanied her to New Haven and throughout the rest of her long career, often being called the "minister's wife."

Today's hymn, probably written in the 1860s, not long before Phebe decided to pursue ordination, takes its theme from Exodus 15:20-21, the Song of Miriam, which follows the story of the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt. It's not quite a paraphrase of that passage, but takes it as a springboard of sorts.

Miriam’s song we’ll echo now,
Singing praises to the Lord;
Who has triumphed gloriously,
Shout the victory of our God!

Sound the timbrel! Loud and high!
Let the song of praise ascend!
Sound the timbrel, far and nigh!
God is our unchanging friend!

When the Red Sea tide o’erwhelmed
Israel’s foes in that great hour
While they sought the promised land,
Then was seen th’Almighty’s power.

Ever thus shall righteousness
Over wrong victorious be,
And the Lord shall be proclaimed
Ruler over land and sea.

Phebe Hanaford. c.1866; alt.
Tune: EVELYN (7.7.7.7.)
Emma L. Ashford, 1905

Poor health and the loss of Ellen Miles, her companion of more than forty years, prevented Phebe from remaining active in her causes in the final years of her life.  She was living unhappily with her granddaughter's family in rural upstate New York, far from the cities and organizations she had loved and led.  Though she had worked for years in the cause of women's suffrage, there is no evidence in local voting records that she cast a vote in 1920, the first national election following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.  At age 91, she was unable to travel to the polls on her own. Fortunately, New York State allowed women to vote a few years earlier, and she did take advantage of that limited opportunity.

She died on June 2, 1921, one month after her 92nd birthday, and was buried in an unmarked grave next to her daughter Florence Hanaford Warner.  There were some attempts over the years to have a headstone erected for her, but that did not happen until 1998, when the headstone (pictured below) was funded by the Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society.


P.S. - As we were discussing Abraham Lincoln's funeral services two days ago, it should be noted that Hanaford also wrote a hymn for an ecumenical memorial service for the President at the Old South Congregational Church in Reading, Massachusetts.  This is the first stanza:

Hushed today are sounds of gladness
From the mountains to the sea;
And the plaintive voice of sadness
Rises, mighty God, to thee.

Combined choirs from the Congregational, Baptist and Universalist churches sang Phebe's hymn to the tune MOUNT VERNON by Lowell Mason (finally, a historical record of a tune!).  She later published it in the closing chapter of her best-selling biography of Lincoln.



***UPDATE***  This hymn is now posted on Facebook with words and music together.  Go to "Conjubilant W. Song" and click on "Photos" -- it's in the Downloadable Hymns section.


Six Years Ago: Phebe Hanaford

Five Years Ago: Phebe Hanaford

Three Years Ago: Phebe Hanaford