  Adams, Hon. John Quincy, Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, July 11, 1767—February 21, 1848, Washington, D. C. He graduated from Harvard in 1787. From 1794-1801 he was United States Minister to England, the Netherlands and Prussia. In 1806 he was appointed Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard. In 1809 he became United States Minister to Russia, in 1817 he was Secretary of State, and from 1824 to 1828 he was President of the United States. In 1831 he was elected to the House of Representatives, in which body he served until his death. Most of his verse, both religious and secular, was written after he had left the Presidency, but he remains the only hymn writer who has ever been President of this country. In his later years he composed a metrical version of the Psalms, best described as a free rendering in fairly good verse of what he felt was the essential idea of each Psalm. When his minister, Rev. William P. Lunt, q.v., of the First Parish, (Unitarian) Quincy, Massachusetts, undertook the preparation of his hymn book The Christian Psalmist, (1841), Mrs. Adams put the manuscript of her husband’s metrical Psalms into Mr. Lunt’s hands, and the latter included 17 of them in his book, and five other hymns by his distinguished parishioner. The effect on Adams is recorded in a moving entry in his Journal which reveals an aspect of his character quite unknown to those who regarded him as an opinionated and uncompromising though sincere and upright politician. He wrote on June 29, 1845, “Mr. Lunt preached this morning, Eccles. III, 1. For everything ‘The morning’s dawn, the evening’s shade,’ and so it was sung, but the corresponding seventh line of the same stanza reads, ‘The fields from thee the rains receive,’ totally destroying the rhyme. I instantly saw that the fifth line should read, ‘The morning’s dawn, the shades of eve,’ but whether this enormous blunder was committed by the copyist or the pressman I am left to conjecture.” After Adams’ death his verses, both religious and secular, were published in a small volume entitled Poems of Religion and Society, New York, 1848, which ran to a fourth edition in 1854. This collection included the five hymns and 17 metrical Psalms printed in The Christian Psalmist, unchanged except that the opening line of each psalm has been substituted for the number His five hymns are,
His metrical versions of the Psalms follow:—
A few of these hymns and psalms found their way into other collections. Nos. 2 and 3 were included in Lyra Sacra Americana; no. 18 is in Hymnal for American Youth and the American Student Hymnal; no. 16 is in the Jewish Union Hymnal for Worship, 1914. J. 16, 1647 H.W.F. Alcott, Louisa May, Concord, Massachusetts, November 29, 1833—March 5, 1888, Concord. She was the author of widely known books for children, Little Women, Little Men, and others. Julian’s Dictionary, p. 1602, records her hymn, A little kingdom I possess, and cites Eva Munson Smith’s Women in Sacred Song as quoting a note from Miss Alcott dated “Concord, Oct. 7, 1883,” in which she says that this is “the only hymn I ever wrote. It was composed at thirteen - - - and still expresses my soul’s desire.” Notwithstanding this statement another hymn attributed to her, apparently written for use by young people and beginning, O the beautiful old story! is included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. J 1550, 1602 H.W.F. Alger, Rev. William Rounsville, Freetown, Massachusetts, December 28, 1822—February 7, 1905, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1847 and in the same year became minister of the Mount Pleasant Society, Roxbury, Massachusetts. In 1855 he was settled over the Bulfinch Place Church, Boston. He was a popular lecturer and the author of numerous articles and several books, the most notable of which was his History of the Doctrine of the Future Life, 1864, and later editions. His Christmas hymn Jesus has lived! and we would bring, written in 1845 while he was still a student, is included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. Other poems by him, including a hymn for the graduation of his class from the Divinity School in 1847 and another for the ordination of Thomas Starr King, are included in Putnam, Singers and Songs, but have had no further use. H.W.F. Ames, Rev. Charles Gordon, Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1828—April 15, 1912, Boston, Massachusetts. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1849 and spent some years as a home missionary in Minnesota. In 1859 he joined the Unitarian denomination and served several churches, his last pastorate being with the Church of the Disciples, Boston. In 1905 he wrote a hymn for the dedication of the new edifice of that Society beginning, With loving hearts and hands we rear, which is included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. A hymn beginning Father in heaven, hear us today, is attributed to him in the Universalist Church Harmonies: Old and New, 1898, but is not found elsewhere. H.W.F. Anonymous In Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, there is no Index of Authors, but in its Index of First Lines the name of the author, (often only his or her surname) is given in most instances. The Index also lists 57 hymns as “Anon.” or, more often, with no word as to authorship. The source of several of these hymns can be traced in Julian’s Dictionary or in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, but I have been unable to identify the author or source of the following hymns, or to check their later use, if any. H.W.F. Hys. Ch. Ch.
Anonymous Hymns
H.W.F.
J. 1564
J. 819 H.W.F.
Appleton, Rev. Francis Parker, Boston, Massachusetts, August 9, 1822—June 14, 1903, Cohasset, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1845, and was minister to the Unitarian church, in South Danvers, (now Peabody) Massachusetts from 1846 to 1853. He then left the ministry for secular occupations. His hymn,
was included, anonymously, in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846, and, attributed to him, in Hymns of the Spirit, 1864. It is included in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908; in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. His hymn,
was also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, and in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, but has now dropped out of use. J. 1551, 1606 H.W.F. Badger, Rev. George Henry, Charlestown, Massachusetts, March 27, 1859—May 11, 1953, Orlando, Florida. He was educated at Williams College, A.B. 1883, at Andover Theological Seminary and the Harvard Divinity School, receiving the degree of S.T.B. from the latter institution in 1886. He served several Unitarian churches in New England. From 1912-1918 he was a minister in San Antonio, Texas; from 1919-1936 in Orlando, Florida. The preface to The Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908, is signed with his initials as editor. That book contains three hymns of which he was author:—
In 1910 he wrote a hymn beginning,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. None of these hymns have passed into later collections. H.W.F. Ballou, Rev. Adin, 1803-1890. Without much formal education, but gifted in mind and spirit, he was ordained in 1827 as a Universalist minister, but in 1831 joined the Unitarian denomination in which he served a number of New England parishes. He wrote a hymn beginning, Years are coming—speed them onward! When the sword shall gather rust which was included in Universalist hymnbooks and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Barber, Rev. Henry Hervey, Warwick, Massachusetts, December 30, 1835—January 18, 1923, Jacksonville, Florida. He was educated at Deerfield (Massachusetts) Academy, and at Meadville Theological School from which he graduated in 1861. After pastorates in two New England churches he became in 1881 a professor in Meadville Theological School, a position from which he retired in 1904. His hymn beginning,
dated 1891, had considerable use and was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. H.W.F. Barnard, Rev. John, Boston, Massachusetts, November 6, 1681—January 24, 1770, Marblehead, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1700, and was installed as minister of the Congregational Church in Marblehead in 1716, which he served with distinction through the rest of his life. A number of his sermons were printed, and in 1752 he published A New Version of the Psalms of David, 278 pp., printed in Boston, the result of his own endeavor to produce a fresh metrical translation. It is listed in Julian’s Dictionary, p. 929, under Psalters, English. His book was used in his own church, but not elsewhere, and is now very rare. His own annotated copy is in the Harvard College Library and the original ms. is in the Massachusetts Historical Society. H.W.F. Barrows, Rev. Samuel June, New York, New York, May 26, 1845—April 21, 1909, New York. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1875 and in 1876 was ordained minister of Mount Pleasant Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts, where he served until 1881. He was editor of the Christian Register from 1881 to 1897, and was a member of Congress, 1897-1899. A hymn beginning
is attributed to him in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908. H.W.F. Bartol, Rev. Cyrus Augustus, D.D., Freeport, Maine, August 30, 1813—December 16, 1890, Boston. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1832 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1835. After lay preaching for a year in Cincinnati he was ordained in 1837 as successor to Rev. Charles Lowell (father of James Russell Lowell) in the West Church (Unitarian) in Boston. He retired in 1889. He was author of several books and of a large number of printed sermons and addresses. He, with others, edited Hymns for the Sanctuary, Boston, 1849, commonly called “Bartol’s Collection”, in which was included an anonymous hymn beginning
This hymn passed into the Supplement to Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns of the Church of Christ, Boston, 1853, and into other collections. Its authorship has never been disclosed, but its theme and mode of expression suggest that it may have been written by Bartol. J. 120 H.W.F. Bartrum, Joseph P., a Unitarian layman living in the 19th century, who published The Psalms newly Paraphrased for the Service of the Sanctuary, Boston, 1833, from which his version of Psalm CVI,
was taken for inclusion in several Unitarian collections in Great Britain and America and in the Universalist Church Harmonies, New and Old, 1895. His version of Psalm LXXXVII,
is included in Holland’s Psalmists of Britain, 1843, vol. II, p. 339, with a critical note. Neither hymn is found in use today. J. 116 H.W.F. Beach, Rev. Seth Curtis, D.D., near Marion, Wayne County, New York, August 3, 1837—January 30, 1932, Watertown, Massachusetts. He graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York in 1863, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1866. From 1867 to 1869 he served the Unitarian Church in Augusta, Maine. Ill health then led him to take up a farm in Minnesota for four years. In 1873 he returned to New England, where his longest pastorates were at Bangor, Maine, 1891-1901, and at Wayland, Massachusetts, 1901-1911, when he retired to Watertown. His hymn,
was first printed in the “Order of Exercises at the Fiftieth Annual Visitation of the Divinity School, July 17, 1866,” having been written for that occasion. In 1884 he wrote
These two hymns were included in the Unitarian New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. His third hymn
is included in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908. J. 1581 H.W.F. Belknap, Rev. Jeremy, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, June 4, 1744—June 20, 1798, Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1762; taught school for four years; in 1766 accepted a position as assistant to Rev. Jonathan Cushing of Dover, New Hampshire, and in 1767 was ordained, serving that parish until 1786. In 1787 he became minister of the Federal Street Church, (now the Arlington Street Church) Boston, which he served until his death. Harvard gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1792. He was the author of a three volume History of New Hampshire; of a petition (1788) for the abolition of the slave trade; and of other books and essays; and formed the plan for the Massachusetts Historical Society, organized in 1791. He wrote no hymns but made an important contribution to American hymnody in his collection Sacred Poetry: consisting of Psalms and Hymns adapted to Christian devotion in public and private. Selected from the best authors, with variations and additions, by Jeremy Belknap, D.D., Boston, 1795, which ran to many editions. His intention was to provide a book acceptable to both the conservative and the liberal wings of Congregationalism, to bridge the widening gap which resulted in the formation of the Unitarian denomination a generation later. In this he failed, for only the liberal churches accepted it, though it was widely used by them for 40 years, being much the best of the period. It includes 300 hymns from the best English sources, and was the first to introduce to Americans the hymns by Anne Steele. The only American hymns in the collection are Jacob Kimball’s metrical version of Psalm 65 and Mather Byles’ When wild confusion rends the air. H.W.F. Blake, Rev. James Vila, Brooklyn, New York, January 21, 1842—April 28, 1925, Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Harvard College in 1862 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1866, and served Unitarian churches in Massachusetts and Illinois, his last and longest pastorate being at Evanston, Ill., 1892-1916. Author of a number of books. He shared with W. C. Gannett, q.v. and F. L. Hosmer, q.v. in the compilation of the first edition of Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1880, which included his hymn,
included also in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. The latter book also includes his hymn of the church universal,
H.W.F. Briggs, C. A. A hymn beginning, God’s law demands one living faith (Law of God) is attributed to a person with this name in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. It is probable, but not certain, that the author was Rev. Charles Briggs, Halifax, Massachusetts, January 17, 1791—December 1, 1873, Roxbury, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1815 and from the Divinity School in 1818, was minister of the First Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, 1818-1834, and secretary of the American Unitarian Association, 1835-1848. H.W.F. Briggs, LeBaron Russell, LL.D., Salem, Massachusetts, December 11, 1855—April 24, 1934, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Harvard College in 1875, A.M., 1882; served as tutor, then as professor of English, and as dean from 1891-1925. Harvard gave him the degree of LL.D. in 1900, as did Yale in 1917, and Lafayette University gave him the degree of Litt.D. For the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, December 21, 1920, he wrote a poem which is introduced by a prayer in three stanzas, 11.10.11.10, offered by “The Pilgrim”, beginning, God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us, It is a fine hymn of thanksgiving for religious freedom and it was included in the program celebrating the 300th anniversary of the “Cambridge Platform” in October 27, 1948. It deserves wide use. H.W.F. Brooks, Rev. Charles Timothy, Salem, Massachusetts, June 20, 1813—June 14, 1883, Newport, Rhode Island. He graduated from Harvard College in 1832 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1835. He was ordained as the first minister of the Unitarian Church in Newport, Rhode Island, on January 1, 1837, and served there until 1873. He was author of a number of books, most of them translations from German poets and novelists. After his death a volume entitled Poems, Original and Translated, was published. The only hymn with which his name is associated was in two stanzas beginning,
said to have been written while he was a student in the Divinity School. Part of the first and almost the whole of the second stanza were rewritten by J. S. Dwight, q.v., and Putnam, in Songs of the Liberal Faith, states that it was first published in this form in one of Lowell Mason’s song books in 1844. It was included, with further alterations, in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns of the Church of Christ, 1853, and with yet other changes in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864. In the 20th century collection also entitled Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, the hymn appears in 3 stas. of which the first is by Brooks, the second by Dwight, and a third, of which the first 3 lines are those introduced by Longfellow and Johnson, the remaining four lines from a later unknown source, and its authorship is attributed to “Composite: based on Charles Timothy Brooks and John Sullivan Dwight.” The complicated history of this hymn is traced in Julian, 184, 1566, 1685. H.W.F. Bryant, William Cullen, Cummington, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794—June 12, 1878, New York, New York. He was a student at Williams College for two years, then studied law, and was admitted to the bar at Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1815, where he practised until 1825 when he removed to New York. There he devoted himself to journalism as editor of The New York Review and of the New York Evening Post, reserving part of his time, especially in later years, to literary pursuits at his retreat at Roslyn, Long Island, where he wrote addresses, essays and reviews as well as poems. In point of time he was the first of the famous group of New England poets of the nineteenth century. He began writing verses when a child and composed his noblest poem, Thanatopsis, when only eighteen years of age. His first volume of poems, containing one entitled The Ages delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, and some others, was published in 1821. In 1832 a volume entitled Poems, complete to that date, was published, for which Washington Irving secured republication in England, where it brought him wide recognition. Many successive editions of Poems, each with some additional items, were published in later years, and after his death a complete edition of the Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant appeared in 1879. He also had privately printed a little volume of his Hymns, 1869. The following pieces by him have been included in various collections of hymns, some of them having considerable use in Great Britain as well as in this country.
Putnam, Singers and Songs, etc., p. 123 reports a hymn beginning
“written for the dedication of Rev. R. C. Waterston’s church in Boston,” and another hymn beginning
written “at the request of a friend, Mr. Hiram Barney, for the opening of an Orthodox Congregational Church,” but does not print the text of either, and neither appears to have been included in any Collection. As indicated in the foregoing list, the text of several of Bryant’s hymns is found with the opening line altered from the original, either by the author himself, or, presumably, with his consent, so that it is impossible to say which is the correct or authorized form, and frequently no more than approximate date of composition can be given. The early flowering of Bryant’s gifts as a poet, promoted by a fortunate combination of circumstances, quickly brought him widespread recognition in both Great Britain and America, which deepened J. 189-190, 1682 H.W.F. Bulfinch, Rev. Stephen Greenleaf, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, June 18, 1809—October 12, 1870, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was son of Charles Bulfinch, a leading architect, and received his early education in Washington, D.C., returning to Cambridge to enter the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1830. He was ordained in January, 1831, as assistant to Rev. Samuel Gilman, q.v., of Charleston, South Carolina, and later served Unitarian churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; Nashua, New Hampshire; Dorchester, Massachusetts and East Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was a voluminous writer in both prose and verse. Most of his hymns first appeared in his books Contemplations of the Saviour, Boston, 1832; Poems, Charleston, 1834; and Lays of the Gospel, 1845. The first of these was reprinted in England, where 19 of his hymns were included in Beard’s Collection, 1837, and where they had widespread use. His best known hymns are as follows:
These hymns are well written contemplations of gospel episodes, as viewed by the conservative piety of the author’s period. Several were included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846-1848; nos. 6 and 10 are in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853; and most of them in one and another 19th century collection. Only No. 4 has survived in present-day use, being found in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 191, 1555 revised H.W.F. Burleigh, William Henry, Woodstock, Connecticut, February 12, 1812—March 18, 1871, Brooklyn, New York. He was an editor and publisher working successively in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1837-1843; in Hartford, Connecticut, 1843-1849; in Syracuse, New York, 1849-1854. From 1855-1870 he was Harbor Master of New York. He was a member of the Second Unitarian Church in Brooklyn and an ardent advocate of anti-slavery and temperance reforms. Early in life he began writing hymns and other poems which were printed in various periodicals, but for many of which the date and occasion are impossible to determine. They were collected for publication in a volume entitled Poems, Philadelphia, 1841, and this book, enlarged with his later poems, was republished in 1871 after his death, with a biographical notice by his wife. Some of the best were included in the British collection Lyra Sacra Americana, 1868, the editor of which, Dr. Cleveland, said, “Most of these beautiful hymns of Mr. Burleigh’s were given to me in ms. by the author.” From this publication they were taken for extensive use in British hymn books.
The above hymns have had much less use in this country than in Great Britain. Nos. 7 and 10 are in the Universalist Church Harmonies, 1895; nos. 1 and 7 in Hymns of the Spirit. 1937, no. 7 in The Hymnal, 1940; and no. 3 in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book. The others, though very acceptable expressions of the religious thought and feeling in the era in which the author lived, have now dropped out of use. J. 195-6 Revised H.W.F Chadwick, Rev. John White, Marblehead, Massachusetts, October 19, 1840—December 11, 1904, Brooklyn, New York. After two years of study at the Bridgewater Normal School, and a shorter period at Phillips Exeter Academy, he entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1864. He received the degree of A.M. 1888. In December, 1864, he was ordained minister of the Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, where he remained until his death. He was an influential preacher and a prolific author in both prose and verse, his principal publications being a Book of Poems, 1876, Nazareth Town, 1883 (poems), the two being later combined and republished in 1888 with the earlier title; The Bible Today, 1879: Old and New Unitarian Belief, 1894; and first-rate biographies of Theodore Parker, 1901, and William Ellery Channing, 1903. After his death a small volume was published entitled Later Poems, 1905, and his printed sermons have been collected in 14 volumes. As a young man he became a close friend of W. C. Gannett, q.v., and F. L. Hosmer, q.v., both of whom were also born in 1840, though not his classmates in the Divinity School, and his hymns are expressions of a theological outlook similar to theirs, notably in his endeavor to give a religious interpretation to the then disputed doctrine of evolution. Although several of his hymns are of exceptionally fine quality, he often wrote in haste, lacking the patience with which his two friends sought for the precise word to convey their meaning, but he often abbreviated or re-wrote his verses at the request of hymn-book editors, or willingly accepted their proposed alterations. The result is that some of his hymns now appear in forms which depart considerably from their original texts. His His Book of Poems, 1888, and Later Poems, 1905, include all his hymns, three of which had little use, viz:
His best known hymn was written for the Visitation Day exercises at the Harvard Divinity School, 1864,
It has been widely used in Great Britain and in this country. Other hymns by him have had considerable use, as follows:
Several of the above hymns, as printed in current hymn-books, consist of selected stanzas, or have been slightly altered from their original forms, in most cases by Gannett and Hosmer, for inclusion in their collection Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1880, 1911. Two others included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, were not written as hymns but have been quarried out of verses in Later Poems, by permission of the author’s widow, viz:
Of the hymns listed above Hymns of the Spirit, 1937 includes Nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15. J. 216, 1619 Revised by H.W.F. Chapman, Mrs. (No information available). An anti-slavery hymn beginning
is attributed to “Mrs. Chapman” in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. H.W.F. Cheney, Mrs. Ednah D. (Dow) Boston, Massachusetts, June 27, 1824—November 19, 1904, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She married Seth Wells Cheney. She was the author of several books, including The Life and Letters of Louisa May Alcott. She wrote a hymn on “the larger prayer,” beginning
in 4 stanzas of 10 lines each, printed in the Riverside Record and reprinted in the Boston Gazette, February 4, 1882. Enough lines have been taken from this hymn to make a much shorter one in 5 stanzas of four lines each, C.M. for inclusion in Unitarian hymn-books. It has also been considerably rewritten, but since this revised form is not marked as “altered” it is probable that the changes were made by the author or at least with her permission. It is included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Church, Edward Alonzo, Boston, Massachusetts, —— 1844—January 29, 1929, Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was a business man who wrote in 1904, for the laying of the cornerstone of a new edifice for the Church of the Disciples (Unitarian), Boston, of which he was a member, a hymn beginning, Almighty Builder, bless, we pray, The cornerstone that here we lay, The next year, for the final service in the old edifice which the congregation was leaving, he wrote one beginning, O Thou to whom in prayer and praise We here have turned with constant heart. Both hymns were included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and the first is also in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Clapp, Eliza Thayer, 1811-1888. She was a resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts. She was author of Words in a Sunday School, of Studies in Religion, New York, 1845, and of later essays on religion and of poems posthumously collected in a volume entitled Essays, Letters and Poems, privately printed in Boston, 1888. At the request of her friend R. W. Emerson she contributed three hymns and two poems to The Dial, 1841. From one of the hymns in 9 stanzas of 4 lines, published in The Dial, July, 1841, and entitled “The future is better than the past,” is taken the hymn beginning
included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, where it was erroneously attributed to Emerson, an error which was repeated in several other collections which included it. J. 234 H.W.F. Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, D.D., Hanover, New Hampshire, April 4, 1810—June 8, 1888, Boston, Massachusetts. He was named for his step-grandfather, Rev. James Freeman, q.v. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He served as minister of the Unitarian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1833 to 1840. In 1841 he returned to Boston where he gathered a group of persons interested in the more radical social and religious reforms of the day into a church which he named the Church of the Disciples (Unitarian) of which he remained minister until his death. He became one of the most distinguished ministers of his period in Boston, greatly beloved and admired for his courage as well as his piety, his wisdom as well as his wit. He was the author of several books (and many short printed articles) the best known of which were his Orthodoxy: its Truths and Errors, and Ten Great Religions. The latter is an amplification of lectures on Comparative Religion which he gave at the Harvard Divinity School as early as 1854, and again for several years in the eighteen-seventies, the earliest course in this field of study to be given in any American theological school. In 1844 he published a Service Book for use by his congregation, which included a small selection of hymns, among them Sarah Flower Adams’ Nearer my, God, to Thee, which had appeared in England only three years earlier and was now introduced for the first time to an American congregation, whence it quickly passed into numerous other collections. In 1852 a revised and enlarged edition of the Service Book was published entitled the Disciples Hymn Book, which included five hymns by the compiler. A few of his poems are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, and the following hymns by him have come into some use.
Of the above no. 3 was included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846, attributed to Clarke, and nos. 1, 5 and 6 were included as Anonymous. In their Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, these hymns were correctly attributed to Clarke. He was the author of a limited quantity of pleasing religious verse acceptable to his many friends rather than a hymn writer of distinction, his best ones being nos. 3, 5 and 6. The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, includes nos. 3 and 6; The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935, includes nos. 3 and 5; Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, has only no. 3. J. 235, 1556 Re-written, H.W.F. Collyer, Rev. Robert, D.D., Keighly, Yorkshire, England, December 8, 1823—November 30, 1912, New York, New York. His education in childhood was very limited, and in early manhood he became a blacksmith, which had been his father’s trade. He joined the Methodist Church in 1847 and three years later sailed for America, settling at Shoemakertown, Pennsylvania, where he was both a blacksmith and a preacher. Having become acquainted with Dr. W. H. Furness, q.v., of Philadelphia, he accepted Unitarian beliefs and left the Methodist Church. His great intellectual abilities and natural gifts as a preacher brought him an invitation in 1859 to go to Chicago to take charge of the newly organized Unity Church in that city, which he served until 1879, when he accepted a call to the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), New York. He was a widely popular lecturer and author of many published sermons, other articles, and a few occasional verses. The church of which he was minister was destroyed by the great Chicago fire of 1870 but was soon rebuilt. For the dedication of the new building in December 3, 1873, he wrote his one fine hymn beginning,
which altered to
has had wide use in Unitarian hymn books and is included in the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1623 H.W.F. Clute, Rev. Oscar, Bethlehem, New York, March 11, 1837—January 27, 1902, Sawtelle, California. He took the degree of M.S. at Michigan State College, and then studied at Meadville Theological School, 1867-1868. In the latter year he was ordained as minister of the Unitarian Church at Vineland, New Jersey, where he remained for five years. He served churches in Keokuk, Iowa, 1875-1878; Iowa City, 1878-1888; and Pomona, California, 1888-1889. From 1889 to 1893 he was president of Michigan State Agricultural College, and president of Florida Agricultural College from 1893 to 1897, when he moved to California. He wrote a hymn beginning, O Love of God most full, O Love of God most free, which is included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, and in The Hymnal (Presbyterian), 1935, the Handbook to which describes it as “a rhapsody of gratitude for the love of God.” J. 1682 H.W.F. Dana, Charles Anderson, Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819—October 17, 1897, Glen Cove, Long Island, New York. He was one of the leaders in the Brook Farm Association, 1842; then became a journalist and man of letters; on the staff of the New York Tribune, 1847-1862; Assistant Secretary of War, 1863-1864; editor of the New York Sun, 1868. The hymn beginning
which Hedge and Huntington included in their Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, and attributed to “C. A. Dana” was probably written while he was engaged in the Brook Farm experiment. H.W.F. Dwight, Rev. John Sullivan, Boston, Massachusetts, May 13, 1812—September 5, 1893. He graduated from Harvard College and from the Harvard Divinity School, and entered the Unitarian ministry, but after six years turned to literary pursuits, and was for nearly 50 years editor of the Journal of Music. A meditative poem by him in seven stanzas, entitled “True Rest,” beginning
is included in the Supplement in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, but it is not a hymn and his only connection with hymnody was his part in re-writing the hymn beginning
by his friend, C. T. Brooks, q.v. In most versions of this much altered hymn the second stanza is in the form given it by Dwight. J. 1560, 1631 H.W.F. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, LL.D., Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803—April 27, 1882, Concord, Massachusetts. He was the son of Rev. William Emerson, q.v., minister of the First Church of Boston (Unitarian) who, though not himself a hymn writer, published in 1808 the excellent small collection entitled A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (5). R. W. Emerson graduated from Harvard College in 1821 and after further study in the Harvard Divinity School took his A.M. in 1827. He was ordained in 1829 as minister of the Second Church of Boston (Unitarian). He served the church for three years but resigned in 1832, feeling that his pastoral work was inadequate and that he was not in accord with his parishioners’ views about the Communion Service. A volume of his sermons, selected and edited by A. C. McGiffert, Jr., was published in 1938 under the title The Young Emerson Speaks. Although he preached occasionally for several years thereafter he never held another pastorate, but retired to Concord and devoted himself to lecturing and authorship. As an essayist and poet he rose to great and lasting distinction. He published Orations, Lectures, and Addresses, 1844; Poems, 1846; Representative Men, 1850; English Traits, 1856; and a succession of later volumes. His Collected Works were published after his death, in 12 volumes. Perhaps his most famous essay was his epoch-making Divinity School Address, delivered in 1838. In 1833 he wrote his hymn
for the ordination of his successor, Rev. Chandler Robbins, q.v., in the Second Church, though it is more a commemorative poem than an ordination hymn. It was included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864; in Martineau’s Hymns of Praise and Prayer, printed in England in 1873; and in later Unitarian and other hymn
were included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, though without the author’s name, and the same collection erroneously attributed to Emerson a hymn beginning,
the author of which was Eliza T. Clapp, q.v., an error which was repeated in various other collections. Part of Emerson’s poem entitled The Problem, beginning
originally printed in the Dial, July, 1840, and then in his Poems, 1846, was also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, and in Martineau’s Hymns, but has since dropped out of use. Another poem of two stanzas beginning
was attributed to Emerson in the later book called Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, probably mistakenly. These verses are listed as Emerson’s in Granger’s Index to Poetry and Recitations, under A Nation’s Strength, and Granger states that they are to be found in a publication of The Penn Publishing Company of Philadelphia. They are not to be found, however, in the Centenary Edition of Emerson’s Poems nor in Hubbell’s Concordance to the poems of Emerson (N. Y., Wilson, 1932). It is therefore doubtful whether the attribution to Emerson is well-founded. J. 329 Revised by H.W.F. Everett, William, Watertown, Massachusetts, October 10, 1839—February 16, 1910, Quincy, Massachusetts. Son of Hon. Edward Everett. He graduated from Harvard College in 1859; took the B.A. degree at Cambridge University, England, in 1863; and the degrees of A.M. and LL. B. at Harvard in 1865. He received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Williams College in 1889 and the degree of LL.D. from the same college in 1893 and from Dartmouth in 1901. After graduation from the Harvard Law School he did not enter the legal profession but served the College as tutor and then Assistant Professor of Latin for several years. In 1872 the Boston Association of Ministers licensed him as a lay preacher and thereafter he spoke frequently in Unitarian pulpits in New England, but he was never ordained as a settled minister. He served Adams Academy in Quincy, Massachusetts as headmaster from 1877 to 1907, with an interruption of two years when in 1893 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives in Washington. In 1866 The Christian Register printed his hymn beginning
and three years later he wrote “for the Unitarian Festival at the Music Hall [Boston], May 27, 1869” a hymn beginning
These hymns, and four others by him, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, Etc. J. 1634 H.W.F. Fernald, Woodbury Melcher, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, March 21, 1813—December 10, 1873, Boston, Massachusetts. He entered the Universalist ministry in 1835 and served churches of that denomination in Newburyport and Chicopee, Massachusetts, and elsewhere, for a few years. He then became a Unitarian, without entering the ministry of that denomination, and eventually joined the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in Boston. He did some travelling on behalf of this body, as far west as Wisconsin, in intervals of employment at the Custom House and, later, at the Post Office in Boston. He was author of books and essays, most of them expositions of Swedenborgian doctrine, and of a small amount of occasional verse, published in the periodicals of the day but never collected in a printed volume. In his private collection of his poems are a few hymns, only two of which appear to have had any public use. One beginning
was written for the ordination of Rev. Thomas C. Adam as pastor of the West Universalist Society in Boston, March 12, 1845. The other,
a protest against slavery published in the Boston Journal, in July, 1861, was included, in part and considerably re-written, in The Soldier’s Companion: Dedicated to the Defenders of their Country in the Field, by their Friends at Home. This was published as the Army Number of the Monthly Journal, Boston, October, 1861, vol. II, no. 10, a small Unitarian collection of hymns and devotional readings. In this collection the hymn begins,
and is attributed to “Rev. W. M. Fernald,” though it is not included in this form in the author’s private collection of his verse. None of his hymns appear to have had any further use. H.W.F. Flint, Rev. James, D.D. Reading, Massachusetts, December 10, 1779—March 4, 1855. He graduated from Harvard College in 1802, and was ordained an orthodox Congregational minister at East Bridgewater in 1806, where he soon adopted more liberal beliefs, and carried most of his congregation with him. In 1821 he accepted a call to the East Church (Unitarian) Salem, Massachusetts, where he served until his death. In 1843 he published A Collection of Hymns for the Christian Church and Home, to replace the earlier collection (1788) by Rev. William Bentley, q.v., for use in the East Church. Flint’s Collection included several hymns by himself. One of them, “On leaving an old house of worship,” beginning
was included in Lunt’s Christian Psalter, 1841, as was a second, written in 1840 for the 200th anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Quincy, Massachusetts, beginning, In pleasant lands have fallen the lines That bound our goodly heritage. This second hymn has been included in a number of later hymnbooks, among them The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 379 H.W.F. Follen, Mrs. Eliza Lee (Cabot), Boston, Massachusetts, August 15, 1787—January 26, 1860, Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1828 she married Dr. Charles Follen, a German scholar who had sought freedom in this country and who was then teaching German Literature and Ecclesiastical History at Harvard. Later he was minister of the Unitarian Church (now called the Follen Church Society) at East Lexington, Massachusetts. Mrs. Follen both before and after her marriage contributed verse and prose articles to various periodicals and published a number of small books, including Hymns for Children, Boston, 1825; Poems, 1839, and, while she was in England in 1854, another small volume for children, entitled The Lark and the Linnet. These books contain some translations from the German and the versions of a few Psalms. Her best known hymns are
The only one of Mrs. Follen’s hymns in present use is 4c, in The Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908, but several of her poems are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. J. 380, 1298 H.W.F. Foote, Rev. Henry Wilder (I), Salem, Massachusetts, June 2, 1838—May 29, 1889, Boston, Massachusetts. Educated at Harvard, A.B. 1858; A.M. 1861; graduated at the Harvard Divinity School, 1861. He was minister of King’s Chapel (Unitarian), Boston, from 1861 until his death, and his book, The Annals of King’s Chapel (vol. I, 1882, vol. II, 1896, completed by others) gives an authoritative account of the religious controversies in Colonial Boston. At the time of his death he had in preparation a hymnbook to replace the
This hymn has also been included in Hymns for Church and Home, 1896, in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1604 H.W.F. Foote, Rev. Henry Wilder (II), D.D., Litt.D., Boston, Massachusetts, February 2, 1875—still living. Son of the above; educated at Harvard, A.B. 1897; A.M. 1900; S.T.B. 1902. He entered the Unitarian ministry and has served churches in New Orleans, Louisiana; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Belmont, Massachusetts and Charlottesville, Virginia. From 1914-1924 he was an assistant professor at the Harvard Divinity School where he gave a course on the history of Christian hymnody. He was secretary of the committee which edited The New Hymn and Tune Book, published in 1914 by the American Unitarian Association, and was chairman of the committee which edited Hymns of the Spirit, published in 1937 by the Beacon Press (to be distinguished from the earlier Hymns of the Spirit by S. Johnson and S. Longfellow, 1864). This later book includes one hymn by Dr. Foote beginning,
Dr. Foote also edited the words in The Concord Anthem Book, 1924, and in The Second Concord Anthem Book, 1936, for which Professor Archibald T. Davison selected and edited the music. He is the author of several books and articles on the cultural or religious aspects of American colonial history, one of which, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, 1940, covers the period from the publication of the Bay Psalm Book in 1640 to the late nineteen-thirties. Freeman, James, D.D., Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 22, 1759—November 14, 1835, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1777. In March, 1776, Rev. Henry Caner, rector of King’s Chapel, Boston, left with the British troops when they evacuated the town, accompanied by many of his leading parishioners. The remaining members of the church in September, 1782, engaged James Freeman as a lay “Reader” to conduct worship. The prayers for the King and royal family of England had been dropped and Freemen soon began to omit references to the Trinity, expecting soon to be dismissed as Reader. Instead the congregation voted to revise the liturgy in accordance with his beliefs and in 1785 published the first edition of the “Book of Common Prayer according to the Use of King’s Chapel.” This action led Bishop Seabury, after his arrival in America, to refuse ordination to Freeman, whereupon the congregation ordained him according to Congregational usage. Freeman thus became “the first avowed preacher of Unitarianism in the United States.” He remained active pastor of the Chapel until 1826. He edited a Collection of Psalms and Hymns for public worship, published in 1799. It included 155 psalms “selected chiefly from Tate and Brady,” followed by 90 hymns, and remained in use in the Chapel until the publication in 1830 of the much better Collection edited by his successor, Rev. F. W. P. Greenwood, q.v. Freeman wrote one hymn
which first appeared in his Collection, from which it passed to a number of later ones. It is an adaptation for congregational use of Thomson’s “Hymn on the Seasons.” See Putnam, Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. J. 389 Revised by H.W.F. Frothingham, Rev. Nathaniel Langdon, D.D., Boston, July 23, 1793—April 4, 1870, Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1811, and after a brief period of further study and as tutor in the College, he entered the Unitarian ministry and in 1815 was settled as minister of the First Church in Boston, where he served until 1850, when ill-health and approaching blindness caused his resignation. He was one of the most distinguished Boston ministers of his period, and the author of a good deal of verse, published in his Metrical Pieces, Translated and Original, 1855, and in a second volume with the same title in 1870. In 1828 he wrote his finest hymn,
In 1835 he wrote
His later hymns were
Of these hymns the first two were included in Lunt’s Christian Psalter, 1841; nos. 1, 2, 6 and 7 were included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ (1853); and all but no. 8 are included in the author’s Metrical Pieces, 1855. No. 5 had considerable use in the 19th century, but no. 1 alone survives in 20th century Unitarian collections. J. 400, 1564 Revised H.W.F. Frothingham, Rev. Octavius Brooks, son of Rev. Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, D.D., q.v., Boston, November 26, 1822—November 27, 1895, Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1843, and in 1846 from the Harvard Divinity School, where, for the graduating exercises of his class, he wrote his fine, and only, hymn,
which was included in the Book of Hymns prepared by his classmates, Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson, published later in the same year. He served as minister of the (Unitarian) North Church, Salem, Massachusetts from 1847 to 1855, and became minister of the Third Congregational Church in New York City, resigning in 1879. He was a bold, outspoken, eloquent speaker, and the author of many printed discourses and of several important biographies. J. 400, 1638 H.W.F. Furness, Rev. William Henry, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, April 20, 1802—January 30, 1896, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1820 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1823, and was given the degree of Doctor of Divinity by Harvard in 1847. In 1825 he was ordained minister of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia where he served for 50 years before becoming pastor emeritus, his connection with the church covering a period of 71 years. He was an accomplished scholar, and attained distinction as a preacher, an author and a worker in social reforms. His publications include Notes on the Gospels, 1836; Jesus and his Biographers, 1838; The History of Jesus, 1850; a Manual of Domestic Worship, 1840, in which his earlier hymns were printed; a translation of Schiller’s Song of the Bell; and other translations from the German. His collected Verses, Translations and Hymns appeared in 1886. The following hymns by him have had considerable use.
Dr. Furness’s hymns, though creditable religious verse of the period and widely esteemed because of the author’s distinction, nowhere attain a very high level of poetic beauty, and almost all of them have passed out of use. Only nos. 8, 10, and 12 were included in the Unitarian New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and only no. 12 survives in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 402, 1638 Revised by H.W.F. Fuller, Sarah Margaret, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 23, 1810—July 16, 1850, in a shipwreck south of New York. In 1847 she married the Marchese Ossoli in Rome. She did educational work in Boston and in Providence, Rhode Island, edited The Dial in 1840, and was noted locally for her intellectual brilliance. Memorials of her by R. W. Emerson, W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke appeared in 1851, her Works in 1874. Her hymn beginning
from Life Without and Life Within, 1859, p. 404, had some use in Great Britain as well as in America. J. 1585 H.W.F. Gannett, Rev. William Channing, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, March 13, 1840—December 15, 1923, Rochester, New York. He graduated from Harvard College in 1860; taught school in Newport, Rhode Island one year; and spent four years on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, as agent for the New England Freedmen’s Society doing relief and educational work with the thousands of Negro refugees gathered there. In 1865 he studied for a year in Europe, then entered the Harvard Divinity School from which he graduated in 1868. His first pastorate was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1868-1871. He then spent several years writing a biography of his father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, who had been William Ellery Channing’s successor as minister of the Federal Street Church, Boston. He was minister of Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1877-1883; served the Western Unitarian Conference for four years; was minister at Hinsdale, Illinois, 1887-1889; and of the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, 1889-1908, where he remained as minister-emeritus until his death. Throughout his professional career he was closely associated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer, q.v. Together they published three small collections entitled The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, the first in 1885, the second in 1894, the third in 1918; and together they also edited Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1880, revised edition in 1911. James Vila Blake, q.v., was co-editor of the first edition. This little hymn book is a markedly individualistic production with many of the older hymns altered to conform to the beliefs of the editors. In these publications, in which most of their own hymns were first published, and in the careful workmanship with which their thought was brought to a perfection of poetic utterance, Gannett Dr. Gannett’s hymns are listed, with annotations “based upon ms. notes kindly supplied by the author” in Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 1638-9, as follows:
Of the hymns thus listed in Julian’s Dictionary Nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9 have been widely used and are included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. No. 1 was written to be set to J. B. Dykes’ tune Nicaea, to which it is usually sung. No. 4 is probably the earliest hymn in the English language to give a religious interpretation of the then novel and controversial doctrine of evolution. No. 9, as included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, is attributed to “William Channing Gannett and others”, being an arrangement from one of his poems. Another fine hymn by Dr. Gannett beginning,
Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, also includes as a hymn beginning,
Finally, mention should be made of his part in giving form to the great hymn beginning
H.W.F Gilman, Mrs. Caroline (Howard), Boston, Massachusetts, October 8, 1794—September 18, 1888, Washington D. C. She married Rev. Samuel Gilman, q.v., on October 14, 1819, and after his death in 1858 lived for a time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later in Tiverton, Long Island, New York. She began to write stories and poems at an early age, many of which were published in “The Rosebud,” later called “The Southern Rose,” a juvenile weekly paper published in Charleston, South Carolina, which she edited for several years, beginning in 1832. Her book entitled “Verses of a Lifetime” was published in 1854, as were a number of other books which gave her a considerable reputation as an author. Five of her poems are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc. Two of her hymns had considerable use,
Neither of these hymns is in current use. J. 423 Revised by H.W.F. Gilman, Rev. Samuel, D.D., Gloucester, Massachusetts, February 16, 1791—February 9, 1858, Kingston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1811, served the College as tutor in mathematics for two years, and studied in the Harvard Divinity School. On December 1, 1819, he was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which he served with great distinction until his death, which occurred while on a visit to Massachusetts. His wife, Caroline Howard Gilman, q.v., was a writer noted in her day. He wrote a good many poems and essays, published in magazines; a book, “Memoirs of a New England Village Choir,” 1829, which ran to three editions; and in 1856 a volume of his miscellaneous essays, entitled “Contributions to Literature, Descriptive, Critical, Humorous, Biographical, Philosophical and Poetical.” His two best known songs were The Union Ode, composed for the Union party of South Carolina and sung there on July 4, 1831, during the Nullification excitement, and later in the North during the Civil War; and the college hymn Fair Harvard, which he wrote in 1836. He had come to Cambridge for the twenty-fifth anniversary of his graduation and the 200th anniversary of the founding of the College. On the eve of the celebration, having already an established reputation as a poet, he was asked to write a song for the occasion and it was sung at the meeting on September 8, 1836, to a tune popular at the time, composed for the song “Believe me, if all those endearing young charms.” Harvard gave him the honorary degree of D.D. in 1837. He wrote a number of hymns of minor importance.
All these hymns have long since passed out of use. Gilman (with C. M. Taggart) edited the Charleston Collection in 1854, under the title Services and Hymns for the use of the Unitarian Church of Charleston, S.C., a second and enlarged edition of which appeared in 1867. It included three of his hymns, nos. 1, 3 and 5, listed above, and the two by his wife, Caroline Gilman, q.v., listed under her name. J. 423, 1592 revised—H.W.F. Goldsmith, Rev. Peter Hair, D.D. (1865-1926) was born in Greenville, South Carolina. He was educated at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and served several Baptist churches before transferring his membership to the Unitarian denomination, after which he served as minister to the First Church in Salem, Massachusetts, 1903-1910, and to the church in Yonkers, New York, 1910-1917. In 1912 he wrote a hymn beginning, Holy, holy Lord, We with one accord, which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, but has not passed into other collections. H.W.F. Greenough, James Bradstreet, Portland, Maine, 1833-1901, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1856, was appointed tutor in 1865, assistant professor in 1873, and professor of Latin in 1883. In 1884 he wrote the Latin hymn in four stanzas beginning
for the tune Harvard Hymn which his friend, John Knowles Paine, professor of music at Harvard, had composed in 1883 for use at the Harvard Commencement dinner. It is included in The University Hymn Book, 1896, and in The Harvard University Hymn Book, 1926. H.W.F. Greenwood, Helen Woodward, Leominster, Massachusetts, April 18, 1880—April 2, 1959, Leominster. She was for many years engaged in secretarial work for the General Alliance of Unitarian Women at 25 Beacon Street, Boston. A hymn by her, beginning
is included in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908. H.W.F. Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822—June 10, 1909, Roxbury, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1839, the youngest member of his class. He did not go to the Divinity School, but taught in the Boston Latin School and studied for the ministry under the direction of Rev. S. K. Lothrop and Rev. J. G. Palfrey. He was licensed to preach by the Boston Association and in 1846 was ordained as minister of the Church of the Unity (now the First Unitarian Church), Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1856 he moved to Boston, where he served the South Congregational Church (Unitarian) as minister and minister emeritus until his death. He was a voluminous writer. One of his stories entitled “A Man Without A Country,” and another, “In His Name,” brought him wide reputation. He was a distinguished preacher and a greatly beloved pastor, an ardent advocate of peace who as early as 1871 proposed a “United States of Europe,” and in 1889 outlined a plan for an “International Tribunal.” In 1858 he wrote a hymn “For the dedication of a Church” beginning,
which was included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, from which Martineau took it for his Hymns of Praise and Prayer, London, 1873. J. 481 H.W.F. Hale, Mary Whitwell, Boston, Massachusetts, January 29, 1810—November 17, 1862, Keene, New Hampshire. Most of her life she was a school teacher in Boston, later in Taunton, Massachusetts, and, for her last 20 years, in Keene. She wrote a good deal of verse. Two of her poems, one on “Home,” and the second on “Music” were written for a juvenile concert in the Unitarian Church at Taunton, April, 1834. A number of her later hymns and poems appeared in The Christian Register, signed by Y.L.E. (the final letters of her name), and in 1840 a volume entitled Poems was published in Boston. Several of her poems are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc. Four of her hymns were included in the Cheshire Collection, 1844, viz:
Of these nos. 2 and 3 were taken from her Poems, and nos. 1 and 4 were written for the Cheshire Collection. No. 4 is in Church Harmonies. 1895, but none of her hymns are in current use. J. 481 H.W.F. Hall, Harriet Ware, Boston, Massachusetts, September 15, 1841—March 18, 1889, Boston. She was a lifelong resident of Boston, a member of King’s Chapel. Two small books by her were privately printed, one a collection of poems entitled A Book for Friends, 1888, the other entitled Essays, printed posthumously in 1890. The first book contains a hymn beginning
in three stanzas, 7.7.7.7.D., dated February 10, 1869, and written for the installation of Rev. E. H. Hall at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1869. It is included in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908, the first line altered to read,
H.W.F. Ham, Rev. Marion Franklin, D.D., Harveysburg, Ohio, February 18, 1867—July 23, 1956, Arlington, Massachusetts. He was educated in the public schools at Harveysburg, but as a youth moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee to find employment. There he joined the Unitarian Church and, after serving it as a lay reader for several years, was ordained in 1898 as its minister, serving it until 1904. He later served Unitarian churches in Dallas, Texas, 1904-1909; in Reading, Massachusetts, 1909-1934; and in Waverley, Massachusetts, 1934-1939. He began to write verse in 1888, and many of his poems appeared in newspapers and periodicals, some of them being widely reprinted. His collected poems were published in book form in 1896, entitled The Golden Shuttle, which reached a fourth edition in 1910. He then turned to hymn writing, and four of his earliest hymns were included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, viz:—
These are also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, as are five later hymns by him, viz:—
In April, 1936, he wrote an Easter hymn
which first appeared in the Boston Transcript. It is included in The Hymnal, 1940. In his later years he published, or had privately printed, several small booklets containing these and other poems by him: Songs of the Spirit, 1932; Songs of Faith and Hope, 1940; Songs at Sunset, 1951; Songs of a Lifetime, 1953; and In a Rose Garden, 1956. Of these, Songs of a Lifetime contains what he regarded as his best poems, as well as his latest hymns, among them one widely used on United Nations Sunday, beginning,
and a fine national hymn,
A number of his hymns have been included in the hymnals of several denominations, and No. 2 was translated into Japanese. Dr. Ham’s hymns manifest a deep spiritual insight expressed with literary craftsmanship of a high order, which make them among the most notable contributions to American hymnody in the first half of the 20th century. H.W.F. Harris, Florence, (Mrs. Robert G. Hooke) (1891-1933) wrote in 1907, for the tenth anniversary of Unity Church (Unitarian), Montclair, New Jersey, of which she was a member a hymn entitled “The Founders,” beginning,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Harris, Rev. Thaddeus Mason, D.D. (1768-1842). He graduated from Harvard in 1787, entered the ministry and served the First Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts (Unitarian) from 1793 until his resignation in 1836. Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1801 he printed a leaflet with a few hymns, which formed the basis for a larger collection of Hymns for the Lord’s Supper, original and selected, [edited] by Thaddeus Mason Harris. D.D. Boston; printed by Sewall Phelps, No. 5 Court Street, 1820. A second edition was printed in 1821. This booklet contains original hymns by Rev. John Pierpont, q.v., Rev. Samuel Gilman, q.v., and others, none of them in use today. H.W.F. Hedge, Rev. Frederic Henry, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 1805—August 21, 1890, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Son of Professor Levi Hedge of Harvard, he was a very precocious child, ready to enter college at 12 years of age, but his father wisely sent him to Germany, with a tutor, George Bancroft, later a noted historian, where he studied in German schools for 5 years. He then returned to Harvard College, graduating in 1825, followed by a period of study in Harvard Divinity School, where he became an intimate friend of R. W. Emerson. He was ordained minister of the First Congregational Parish (Unitarian) in West Cambridge (now Arlington) Massachusetts in 1829. In 1835 he moved to Bangor, Maine, where he served the Independent Congregational Society until 1850, then serving the Westminster Congregational Church, Providence, Rhode Island, 1850-1856. In the latter year he was called to the First Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts, which he served until 1872. His removal to Brookline enabled him to serve as a nonresident professor of ecclesiastical history in the Harvard Divinity School. He retired from the ministry in 1872 and moved to Cambridge, where he was appointed professor of German language and literature, retiring in 1882. He was a man of extraordinary intellectual ability, one of the most learned of his time, and a pioneer in bringing to this country an acquaintance with German literature and metaphysics. Harvard gave him the degree of D.D. in 1852, and that of LL.D. in 1886. He was one of the editors of the Christian Examiner, author of The Prose Writers of Germany, 1848, of Reason in Religion, 1865, of a volume of Metrical Translations and Poems in 1888, and of a large number of essays and sermons. He was president of the American Unitarian Association 1860-1863. He collaborated with Dr. F. D. Huntington, q.v., in editing Hymns for the Church of Christ, Boston, 1853, to which he contributed three translations from the German:
His original hymns included in Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, are,
All these hymns, and two other religious poems, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. Most of them had gone out of use by the end of the 19th century, but nos. 1, 6 and 8 (beginning It is finished, Man of sorrows,) are in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. By far the best known of Hedge’s hymns is his fine and accurate translation of Luther’s great chorale Ein’ feste Burg (no. 1). This is the version accepted by almost all the Protestant denominations in this country, whereas in Great Britain Thomas Carlyle’s earlier translation (1831) is generally used, although James Martineau included Hedge’s version in his Hymns of Praise and Prayer, 1873, mistakenly attributing it to Samuel Longfellow. Putnam, op. cit., 214, says that it was first printed in W. H. Furness’s Gems of German Verse, which appeared in Philadelphia, without date but undoubtedly in the latter part of 1853, a second edition following in 1859. That Hedge should have sent his translation The earliest record of the hymn, however, is to be found in the autograph letter (now in the Harvard University Library) which Hedge wrote to Rev. Joseph H. Allen, his successor in the pulpit at Bangor, Maine, asking him to recommend hymns for inclusion in the book on which he and Huntington were working. This letter is dated “Providence, March 27th, 1853.” In the course of it Hedge wrote, “I have made a new translation of Luther’s splendid psalm ‘Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott’ Carlyle’s translation not being available.” This statement is followed by the four stanzas of his translation. That book contained no printed tunes, only citing the metre at the head of each hymn as a guide to the organist, but in his letter Hedge goes on with the surprizing statement, “The original is much sung in Germany and therefore I suppose that it will not be difficult to find a tune for it.” Since he must have become familiar with both the words and the music of the famous chorale when he was a youthful student in Germany this remark indicates that the tune was still unknown in America, and that he took little interest in introducing it. J. 504, 1647 Revised by H.W.F. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 1822—May 9, 1911, Cambridge. He graduated from Harvard College in 1841 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1847. Entering the Unitarian ministry he served churches in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1847-1850, and in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1852-1858. He was an ardent Abolitionist and when the Civil War came he entered the Union Army, in which he rose to the command of a Negro regiment. After the war he became a man of letters and published several books and numerous essays. While still a student in the Divinity School he contributed to the Book of Hymns, 1846, which his friends Longfellow and Johnson were preparing, four hymns, which they marked with an asterisk, viz:
The last two have had considerable use. Both express the pessimistic mood with which the young man viewed the evils of the time. One of his later poems of social justice has also had some use as a hymn, 5. From street and square, from hill and glen, Of this vast world beyond my door. His four hymns in the Book of Hymns, with other poems by him, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, of the Liberal Faith, 1875. Of the above hymns those listed as 3 and 5 are included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 521, 1711 H.W.F. Hill, Rev. Thomas, D.D., L.L.D., New Brunswick, New Jersey, January 7, 1818—November 21, 1891, Portland, Maine. He graduated from Harvard College in 1843 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1845. He served as minister of the First Parish (Unitarian) in Waltham, Massachusetts from 1845 to 1859; was president of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1859-1862; president of Harvard University, 1862-1868; and minister of the First Parish of Portland, Maine, 1873 to 1891. He was distinguished as a mathematician. In the earlier part of his career he wrote or translated many hymns which found publication in current periodicals, usually anonymously or signed only with cryptic initials. One by him, beginning,
was included in a few hymn books of the 19th century, but has dropped out of use. A few others, mostly written for special occasions, are in Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, but none have found other use. J. 524 H.W.F. Holland, Joseph Gilbert, Belchertown, Massachusetts, July 24, 1819—October 12, 1881. A newspaper man on the staff of the Springfield Republican who became editor of Scribner’s Magazine in 1870. Author of several books and some poetical pieces. One of the latter, beginning
from his Bitter Sweet, 1858, was included in the Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book for Church and Home, Boston, 1868. J. 529 H.W.F. Holmes, Rev. John Haynes, D.D.; Litt. D.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 29, 1879—still living. He graduated from Harvard, summa cum laude in 1902, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1904. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1930, from St. Lawrence University in 1931, and from Meadville Theological School in 1945; Doctor of Letters from Benares Hindu University, India, in 1947, and Doctor of Humanities from Rollins College, Florida, in 1951. He was installed as minister of the Third Religious Society (Unitarian), Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1904, and went to New York in 1907 as associate and successor to Rev. Robert Collyer, q.v., minister of the Second Congregational Unitarian Society, (Church of the Messiah, now called the Community Church of New York) of which he became pastor emeritus in 1949. He withdrew from the Unitarian fellowship in 1919, not on theological grounds but because he preferred a position independent of any denominational label. Throughout his career in New York he has been an outspoken leader in many causes for social betterment, and a prolific author in prose and verse who has published a large number of books, religious and biographical, and of printed sermons. No other American author of his period has written so many fine hymns which have been widely used in this country, in England, and in Japan.
Of the hymns listed above, Nos. 3, 6, 11, 18, 20, 23 and 29 have had the most widespread use. H.W.F. in collaboration with J.H.H. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, M.D., LL.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29, 1809—October 7, 1894, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in the famous Class of 1829, studied medicine and became a practitioner in Boston, and was appointed Professor of Anatomy in the Harvard Medical School in 1847. Although distinguished as a physician his fame is that of a man of letters gifted with a sense of humor which made him one of the wittiest men of his time. Besides important medical treatises he wrote essays, novels, biographical sketches, and poetry which brought him a great reputation in this country and in Great Britain. Much of his poetry is occasional verse, which he was often called upon to write, such as his “International Ode” to be sung to the tune “America” (“God Save the Queen”) on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1860. Oxford University gave him the honorary degree of D.C.L. in 1886. He was a member of Kings’ Chapel, (Unitarian) Boston, and two of his poems are about that church. He contributed The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table to the opening issues of The Atlantic Monthly, 1857-58, published The Professor at the Breakfast Table in 1859, The Poet at the Breakfast Table in 1872. He wrote Elsie Venner, 1861, and two other novels. His poetry was published in Songs in Many Keys, 1861; Humorous Poems, 1865; Before the Curfew, 1888; and in his Complete Poetical Works, in 1895. Although he made a greater contribution to American hymnody than did any other of the “New England poets” of his era, except Bryant and Whittier, his hymns were incidental literary by-products, for he was not primarily a hymn writer. They include:
Of these hymns nos. 4 and 6 have had the most widespread use. Those two, and no. 1 are included in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935, and nos. 4, 6, 7 and 8 are in the Unitarian New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and In Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 530, 1649, 1713, rewritten by H.W.F. Horton, Rev. Edward Augustus, Springfield, Massachusetts, September 28, 1843—April 15, 1931, Toronto, Canada. He studied at the University of Chicago and at Meadville Theological School, from which he graduated in 1868. He served Unitarian churches in Leominster, Massachusetts, 1868-1875; Hingham, Massachusetts, 1877-1880; and the Second Church in Boston, 1880-1892. Thereafter he was active in the work of the Unitarian Sunday School Society. In 1912 he wrote an “Anniversary Hymn” beginning,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. H.W.F. Hosmer, Rev. Frederick Lucian, D.D., Framingham, Massachusetts, October 16, 1840—June 7, 1929, Berkeley, California. He graduated from Harvard College in 1862, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1869. In October of that year he was ordained minister of the First Congregational Church (Unitarian), Northborough, Massachusetts, where he served for 3 years. He served the Unitarian Church in Quincy, Illinois, 1872-1877; then spent sixteen months in Europe, returning late in 1878 to serve the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, Ohio, 1878-1892; the Church of the Unity, St. Louis, Missouri, 1894-1899; and the First Unitarian Church, Berkeley, California, 1900-1915, where he remained as minister-emeritus until his death. In 1887 Buchtel College gave him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. While in the Divinity School he formed a close life-long friendship with William C. Gannett, q.v. Neither wrote any hymns until early middle life, Dr. Gannett’s earliest having been written in 1873, Dr. Hosmer’s in 1875, but thereafter they worked together for nearly four decades to make a contribution to American hymnody comparable to that made by Samuel Longfellow, q.v., and Samuel Johnson, q.v., a generation earlier. Of the two men it has been well said that “Gannett was the better poet, Hosmer the better hymn writer,” and many more of his hymns than of those by Gannett have come into widespread use. Working together they edited Unity Hymns and Chorals, published in 1880, a revised edition of which appeared in 1911. (J. V. Blake, q.v., was also an editor of the first, but not of the revised edition). In 1885 they published a small collection of their poems entitled The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems, followed by later collections with the same title, 2nd Series 1894, 3rd Series 1918. In 1908 Dr. Hosmer gave a series of lectures Julian’s Dictionary, pp. 1650-51, lists 27 hymns by Dr. Hosmer, with “annotations—from ms. notes supplied—by the author,” as follows:—
This account of Hosmer’s hymns, copied verbatim from Julian’s Dictionary, may be accepted as authoritative as to the date and occasion for each hymn listed, but Canon Julian presumably added the descriptive notations in brackets, and fell into minor inaccuracies, as when he wrote Unity Hymns and Carols for Unity Hymns and Chorals (cf. nos. 3 and 22), and cited the periodical Unity, published in Chicago, as Chicago Unity. By way of further clarification it should be noted that the opening line of no. 12, O beautiful my country, was taken from J. R. Lowell’s great Commemoration Ode, and that Hosmer always wanted it printed ‘O Beautiful my Country’, in recognition of its source. No. 18 was written for the observance by the Western Unitarian Conference of the fiftieth anniversary of Emerson’s famous Divinity School Address. The person initialed as “T.K.” for whom no. 20 was written on February 6, 1891, probably was Thomas Kilpatrick, a layman who did much to make possible the erection of the church in Omaha, which was not dedicated until December 15 of that year. The person initialled “C.W.W.”, for whom no. 27 was written, was Rev. Charles W. Wendte, then minister of the First Unitarian Church in Oakland, California. Julian’s account of Hosmer’s contribution to hymnody, though no doubt as satisfactory as could be expected at the time it was written, is incomplete in two respects. The latest hymn listed is dated 1899, yet at least three earlier hymns by Hosmer are unaccountably missing, (viz, nos. 32, 33, 41, noted below), presumably because he neglected to send Julian any information about them. More important than these are several later occasional
The period of Dr. Hosmer’s hymn writing covered more than 40 years (1875-1917) and during the latter half of that time he was widely recognized by hymn lovers as the most distinguished hymn writer of his time. Many of his hymns found their way into the collections of various denominations in both this country and Great Britain. Canon Dearmer included 8 in the British collection Songs of Praise, and in the accompanying handbook, Songs of Praise Discussed, calls the hymn O Thou, in all thy might so far, (no. 17) “this flawless poem, one of the completest expressions of religious faith,” and the hymn Thy kingdom come, on bended knee, (no. 24) “one of the noblest hymns in the language.” All of Hosmer’s hymns in recent use will be found in both the Unitarian collections—The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, except where initials indicate one or the other book, as follows:—Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 (N.H.T.B.), 8, 10 (N.H.T.B.), 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 (H.S.), 29 (H.S.), 30, 31, 32, 34 (H.S,), 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. Nos. 10, 17, 24, 30 and 40 are included in the Protestant Episcopal Hymnal, 1940. J. 1650 H.W.F. Howe, Mrs. Julia (Ward), New York, New York, May 27, 1819—October 17, 1910, Boston, Massachusetts. Married Samuel Gridley Howe on April 26, 1843. She was a woman with a distinguished personality and intellect; an Abolitionist and active in social reforms; author of several books in prose and verse. The latter include Passion Flower, 1854; Words of the Hour, 1856; Later Lyrics, 1866; and From a Sunset Ridge, 1896. She became famous as the author of the poem entitled “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” beginning, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, which, in spite of its title, was written as a patriotic song and not as a hymn for use in public worship, but which has been included in many American hymn books. It was written on November 19, 1861, while she and her husband, accompanied by their pastor, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, q.v., minister of the (Unitarian) Church of the Disciples, Boston, were visiting Washington soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. She had seen the troops gathered there and had heard them, singing “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave” to a popular tune called “Glory, Hallelujah” composed a few years earlier by William Steffe of Charleston, South Carolina, for Sunday School use. Dr. Clarke asked Mrs. Howe if she could not write more uplifting words for the tune and as she awoke early the next morning she found the verses forming in her mind as fast as she could write them down, so completely that later she re-wrote only a line or two in the last stanza and changed only four words in other stanzas. She sent the poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which paid her $4 and published it in its issue for February, 1862. It attracted little attention until it caught the eye of Chaplain C. C. McCabe (later a Methodist bishop) who had a fine singing voice and who taught it first to the 122d Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment to which he J. 1652 H.W.F. Huntington, Rt. Rev. Frederic Dan, D.D., Hadley, Massachusetts, May 23, 1819—July 11, 1904, Hadley, Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1839 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1842. He was minister of the South Congregational Church (Unitarian), Boston, 1842-1855, and from 1855 to 1859 he was Professor of Christian Morals and University Preacher at Harvard College. In 1859 he was ordained priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church and served as rector of Emmanuel Church in Boston from 1860 to 1869, when he was consecrated Bishop of Central New York. In 1853 he collaborated with Rev. Frederic Henry Hedge, q.v., in editing their Unitarian collection, Hymns for the Church of Christ, to which he contributed three hymns,
The hymn beginning
in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, is a cento taken from no. 2. Hymns for the Church of Christ also includes a good many anonymous hymns, some of which may be by him, though there is no proof that such is the case. Dr. Huntington also collaborated with Dr. Hedge in editing a collection of sacred poetry entitled Elim: Hymns of Holy Refreshment, Boston, 1865, which includes a funeral hymn beginning
This hymn has been mistakenly attributed to Huntington, but is an altered form of a hymn by E. H. Bickersteth beginning
Although Dr. Huntington is known to have written occasional verses in religious themes later in life for his own edification he is not credited with any published hymns after his resignation from his professorship at Harvard, and none of the three listed above are in present use. J. 544, 1714 Revised by H.W.F. Hurlburt, (Hurlbut, Hurlbert) William Henry. Charleston, South Carolina, July 3, 1827—September 4, 1895, Cadenabbia, Lake Como, Italy. (His family name is spelled Hurlburt in records at Charleston but at Harvard he was registered as Hurlbut, and in later years he changed the spelling to Hurlbert). He graduated from Harvard College in 1847 and from the Divinity School in 1849. He preached in Unitarian pulpits for a few months but was never ordained as a settled minister; then he studied in the Harvard Law School for a year; then turned to journalism in New York City. After 1883 he spent most of his time in Europe, his last few years in Italy. As a student at Harvard he was a contemporary of Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson and contributed three hymns to their Book of Hymns, edition of 1848, which they also included in their Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, viz:
In both books his surname is spelled Hurlbut. J. 545 Revised by H.W.F. Johnson, Rev. Samuel, Salem, Massachusetts, October 10, 1822—February 19, 1882, North Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1842 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1846. He served from 1853-1870 as minister of the Independent Church, Lynn, Massachusetts which he organized and which ceased to exist when he resigned. He refused to identify himself with any denomination, though in belief he was a Unitarian and in the public mind was associated with the churches which adhered to the liberal wing of the Congregational order. He was author of a book on Oriental Religions, one of the earliest American studies in the History of Religions. In 1846 he and his classmate in the Divinity School, Samuel Longfellow, q.v., while still students, prepared their Book of Hymns, because they and some of their friends thought the Unitarian hymn books then in use were too traditional. This book appeared in enlarged edition in 1848, and made a notable contribution to American hymnody in its freshness of outlook and its inclusion of hymns by hitherto unrecognized writers, notably John Greenleaf Whittier. Johnson contributed 7 hymns to the edition of 1846, viz:
In the edition of 1848 he included
which he had “Written for the Graduating Exercises of the Class of 1846, in Cambridge Divinity School.” In 1864 he and Longfellow published their second and no less important collection, Hymns of the Spirit, (not to be confused with the book of the same title published in 1937 by the American Unitarian Association). To this volume he contributed 7 more hymns, viz:
This was “Written at the request of Dorothea L. Dix for a collection made by her for the use of an asylum.” (Miss Dix was engaged in a notable reform of institutions for the insane.)
A number of these hymns have had widespread and long-continued use. Numbers 1, 4, 6, 7, and 9 are included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, and stand out as some of the finest examples of American hymnody in their lyrical quality and depth of religious feeling. A few of Johnson’s hymns have found acceptance also in England, the most notable example being No. 7, sung at the consecration of the new Anglican cathedral at Liverpool in 1924, an occasion which the words fitted to perfection. But, since even the existence of the obscure minister in Lynn, Massachusetts, was quite unknown to all but very few of those present, the Samuel Johnson to whom it J. 604-5, 1583, 1681, 1711 H.W.F. Kimball, Jacob, Topsfield, Massachusetts, February 15, 1761—July 24, 1826, Topsfield. He graduated from Harvard in 1780, studied law, taught school, and tried to make a living at various other occupations, with small success except in the field of music where he was regarded as the outstanding singer, teacher, and composer of his period. He edited Rural Harmony, (Boston, 1793) which he followed with Essex Harmony, (1800) and Essex Harmony, Part II, (1802), which included the only tunes of his own composition which can now be identified as his, except those in the popular Village Harmony (1795) the later editions of which, down to 1821, were probably edited by him. There is evidence that he also wrote poetry, including a number of hymns, some of them perhaps the anonymous ones, otherwise unknown, included in the above-mentioned song books. The one hymn which can be attributed to him with assurance is his excellent metrical version of Psalm 65 which Jeremy Belknap included in his Sacred Psalmody (1795), entitled “A New Version” and beginning Thy praise, O God, in Zion waits. The only other hymns by an American author in Belknap’s Collection is Mather Byles’ When wild confusion wrecks the air, republished in 1760.
H.W.F. Larned, Augusta, Rutland, New York, April 16, 1835—1924. Author of six volumes of stories for children and of one on Greek mythology and another on Norse mythology. Contributor to various periodicals and for 20 years correspondent and editorial writer with The Christian Register, Boston. She published in 1895 a book of poems entitled In the Woods and Fields from which was taken her hymn on peace of mind,
for inclusion in the Isles of Shoals Hymn-Book, 1908; The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914 and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Lathrop, Rev. John Howland, D.D., Jackson, Michigan, June 6, 1880—still living. He graduated from Meadville Theological School in 1903, then entered Harvard where he took an A.B. in 1905. He also studied at the University of Chicago, and the University of Jena. He served as minister of the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California, 1905-1911, and the First Unitarian Congregational Church of Brooklyn, New York, 1911 to 1957, when he became pastor emeritus. In 1935 he wrote a hymn for Palm Sunday beginning,
which was included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, set to St. Theodulph. H.W.F. Livermore, Rev. Abiel Abbot, D.D., Wilton, New Hampshire, October 26, 1811—November 28, 1892, Wilton, New Hampshire. He graduated from Harvard College in 1833, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1836. He was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church at Keene, New Hampshire, in November, 1836, and remained there until 1850, when he accepted a call to Cincinnati, Ohio. After a period in New York he was elected president of the Meadville Theological School in 1862, and served in that capacity until 1890, when he retired to his ancestral home at Wilton. He received the degree of D.D. from Harvard in 1888. He was author of a number of books, and of several hymns, printed in Putnam’s Singers and Songs. He was the chief editor of the Cheshire Pastoral Association’s Christian Hymns, 1844, one of the finest and most widely circulated American Unitarian collections, to which he contributed his Communion hymn beginning,
This hymn was included in Martineau’s Hymns, 1873, in most American Unitarian collections, and appears in slightly altered form in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 680 H.W.F. Livermore, Sarah White, Wilton, New Hampshire, July 20, 1789—July 3, 1874, Wilton. She was an aunt of A. A. Livermore, q.v., and was a school teacher for most of her life. She contributed two hymns to the Cheshire Collection, 1844, viz:
These passed into a few other collections. She wrote a number of others for various church occasions, but they have never been collected for publication. J. 680 H.W.F. Long, Hon. John Davis (1838-1915) was born in Buckfield, Maine, October 27, 1838, and died in Hingham, Massachusetts on August 28, 1915. Harvard, A.B. 1857, L.L.D. 1880. He was Governor of Massachusetts, 1880-1883, and Secretary of the Navy, 1897-1902. A member of the First Parish (Unitarian) in Hingham, he wrote one hymn beginning,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, but which has not passed into other books. H.W.F. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, D.C.L., Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807—March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. After four years of study in Europe he was appointed to the Chair of Modern Languages at Bowdoin, but removed to Harvard in 1835, upon his election as professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres in the latter College. He retained that Professorship until 1854, when he retired to give himself time for authorship in prose and verse. He became one of the most widely read and beloved poets in the English-speaking world, and after his death a marble bust commemorating him was placed in Westminster Abbey. In the strict sense of the term he was not a hymn-writer, his brother, Samuel Longfellow, q.v., twelve years his junior, far surpassing him in this field, but hymn-book editors have culled selections from his poems which they could use, as follows:
H.W.F. Longfellow, Rev. Samuel, Portland, Maine, June 18, 1819—October 3, 1892, Portland, was the youngest of the eight children of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow. Stephen Longfellow had graduated from Harvard and had become one of the most prominent citizens of Portland. His son Samuel entered Harvard with the Class of 1839, just after his brother, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, more than twelve years his senior, had returned from Europe to begin his professorship at Harvard. Samuel entered the Harvard Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1846, and served as minister of the Unitarian Church in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1848-51; the Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn, New York, 1853-1860; and the Unitarian Church, Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1878-1883. In the intervals between these pastorates he did much occasional preaching, and, having independent means and no marital ties, made several prolonged visits to Europe. He had an attractive personality, was witty and highly intelligent, and was an acceptable though outspoken preacher, but he is now remembered for his contribution to American hymnody through the hymns which he wrote and the books which he edited. His accomplishment in this field was greater and more lasting than that of any other American in the middle period of the 19th century. Its development can best be traced in the books which he published. The first of these was A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotions, which he and his classmate in the Divinity School, Samuel Johnson, daringly compiled while still students in the School. A not improbable story of the origin of the book reports that their friend, Rev. Francis Parker Appleton, then a young minister at Peabody, Massachusetts, had complained to them about the antiquated hymn-book which he found in use in his church, to which they replied that they would prepare a book for him which would express the religious aspirations of the rising generation. The book appeared in 1846, before either of the young editors had been ordained, and was an immediate success. It was first used in the First Unitarian Church at Worcester, Massachusetts, where Longfellow’s classmate and lifelong friend, Edward Everett Hale, had just been ordained at a service for which Longfellow wrote the ordination hymn, and it was promptly adopted by Theodore Parker for his congregation in Music Hall. The book was re-published in somewhat revised and enlarged form in 1848, and ran to 12 editions. It marked a new epoch in American hymnody because it was the product of young and adventurous but well-trained minds seeking to give utterance to the emotions stirred by the intellectual and political ferment of the times, and because of the new sources to which they turned. They were the first to see and make use of the hymnic possibilities of the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, and to include in an American hymn-book Newman’s “Lead, kindly Light,” which they had found printed in a newspaper without the author’s name, though they altered the first line to read “Send kindly Light,” and another line further down. From their book it passed into other collections, with variant readings. In 1859 Longfellow published a little collection entitled Vespers, hymns for use at the vesper services which he had instituted in his church in Brooklyn. In 1860 he published A Book of Hymns and Tunes for the Sunday School, the Congregation, and the Home, and in 1864 he and Samuel Johnson brought out their second notable book, Hymns of the Spirit, (not to be confused with the hymn book with the same title published by the Beacon Press in 1937). This book contained most of the later hymns written by the two editors, and a good many new hymns by other authors who were glad to contribute them. Its literary level was higher than that of their first book, but it had less popular success, in part, perhaps, because they failed to set the words to tunes, which had become the common practice in the period since their earlier book appeared. In 1876 he brought out A Book of Hymns & Tunes for the Congregation & the Home, a revision of his earlier book with a similar title, in which several of his earlier hymns appear in revised form. In 1887 he printed privately A Few Verses of Many Years. After his death a small volume entitled Hymns and Verses by Samuel Longfellow was published in 1894 with a very brief introductory note by his niece, Miss Alice M. Longfellow. It included 41 hymns which she thought were his, followed by 30 short poems of no outstanding excellence. Some of the “hymns” included seem never to have come into use as such; some of her attributions were mistaken; she omitted some hymns which he wrote or adapted but cited in his books as “Anonymous” because based on the work of others; and she did not always print the best of extant variant readings. This book, therefore, must be used with caution in compiling the list of Longfellow’s hymns, whether original or adapted. Before listing his hymns it should be noted that he wrote Alphabetical List of Hymns written or adapted by Samuel Longfellow
There are also five hymns, composite in origin and listed as “Anonymous” in Hys. Sp. 1864, which in style and sentiment so closely resemble S.L.’s writings as to suggest that he gave them the form in which they are there printed, viz:—
The Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908, contains a hymn in two stanzas, 8.6.8.6.D., beginning
H.W.F. Loring, Louisa Putnam (1854-1924) of Boston and Pride’s Crossing, Massachusetts, compiled Hymns of the Ages, published in 1904. Her literary and musical standards were high, and the book was handsomely printed, but its appeal was limited and it had to compete with several other excellent hymnbooks then on the market for use among Unitarians. It included Miss Loring’s own morning hymn beginning,
also included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. H.W.F. Loring, William Joseph, Boston, Massachusetts, October 8, 1795—1841, Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1813 and went into business in Boston. He was a lay member of the Unitarian denomination; was president of the Washington Benevolent Society; and was a member of the Horticultural Society. He was probably the author of the hymn beginning,
attributed to “W. J. Loring” in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. H.W.F. Lowell, James Russell, LL.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 22, 1819—August 12, 1891, Cambridge. Son of Rev. Charles Lowell, minister of the West Church (Unitarian), Boston, he graduated from Harvard College in 1838, and entered upon a literary career as a poet, essayist and scholar. In 1855 he succeeded H. W. Longfellow as Professor of Belles Lettres at Harvard and spent the next two years in Europe to increase his knowledge of southern European languages and literature. On his return he was the first editor of The Atlantic Monthly, 1857-1862, then editor of The North American Review, 1863-1872. He was United States Minister to Spain, 1877-1880, and to Great Britain, 1880-1885. He wrote many essays, addresses and poems. These last were published in a succession of volumes, “A Year’s Life,” 1841; “Poems,” 1844-1854; “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” 1845; “A Fable for Critics,” 1845; “The Biglow Papers,” 1848 and 1867; “The Commemoration Ode,” 1865; “Under the Willows,” 1868; and later volumes, his “Complete Poems” appearing in 1895. Though some of his poems show deep religious feeling he made only a slight and indirect contribution to American hymnody, writing only one hymn and one Christmas carol, although stanzas quarried out of his poems have been used as hymns, as follows:—
Of the above listed hymns all except no. 3 are in current use in various hymn books. Nos. 2 and 5 are in The Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935; nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in the New Hymn and Tune Book, J. 698 H.W.F. Lunt, Rev. William Parsons, D.D., Newburyport, Mass., April 21, 1805—March 31, 1857, Akabah, Arabia. He graduated from Harvard College in 1823, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1828. On June 19, 1828 he was ordained as the first settled minister of the Second Unitarian Congregational Society in New York, where he served for five years. On June 3, 1835, he was installed as associate minister of the First Church in Quincy, Mass., where he became the sole minister in 1843 and served until his death while on a journey to Palestine. After his death his hymns and occasional poems were printed in a small volume entitled Gleanings, but none of them have been included in later books. His contribution to American hymnody was made by the publication of his collection entitled The Christian Psalter, 1841, for his congregation at Quincy, but its fine quality brought it into much wider use. It is chiefly remembered today because it included 5 hymns and the metrical version of 17 psalms by his distinguished parishioner, John Quincy Adams, q.v. J. 703 H.W.F. Mann, Rev. Newton, Cazenovia, New York, January 16, 1856—July 25, 1926, Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from Cazenovia Academy, and during the Civil War served as head of the Western Sanitary Commission. He then entered the Unitarian ministry and was ordained as pastor of the church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which he organized and served for three years. He later served churches in Troy, New York, 1868-70; Rochester, New York, 1870-1888; and Omaha, Nebraska, 1888-1908, after which he retired to Chicago. His only connection with hymnody was his versification of an English translation of the Jewish creedal statement known as the Yigdal. His verse, which has not survived, was later recast by Rev. W. C. Gannett, q.v., to form the great hymn
concerning which detailed information will be found under Dr. Gannett’s name. In its present form the hymn is probably mostly the work of Gannett, but Mann should be credited with having drafted its earlier form. See also Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, 339-340. H.W.F. Marean, Mrs. Emma (Endicott), Boston, Massachusetts, January 20, 1854—October 17, 1936, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She married Joseph Mason Marean January 20, 1876. Two hymns by her were included in The Isles of Shoals Hymn Book (Unitarian), 1908,
Neither has been included in later hymn books but both are in her small volume of poems, Now and Then, Cambridge, 1928. H.W.F. Mason, Mrs. Caroline Atherton (Briggs), Marblehead, Massachusetts, July 27, 1823—June 13, 1890, Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In 1853 she married Charles Mason, a lawyer living in Fitchburg. She published in 1852 a volume of poems entitled Utterance: or Private Voices to the Public Heart, and after her death another collection was published, her Lost Ring and Other Poems, 1891. Three of her hymns have had considerable use.
Of these hymns no. 2 has had considerable use. It is included in Hymns of the Church Universal, 1891; the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914; the Pilgrim Hymnal, 1935; Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1669 H.W.F. Miles, Sarah Elizabeth (Appleton) Boston, Massachusetts, March 28, 1807—January 3, 1877, Brattleboro, Vermont. She married Solomon P. Miles. In 1827 she printed in the Christian Examiner a hymn beginning,
which passed into a number of hymn books of the period, and in 1828, in the same periodical she printed a poem in 4 stanzas, C.M.D., which S. Longfellow and S. Johnson, in their second hymn-book, Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, divided into two hymns, of 2 stanzas each, the first beginning
the second
They also included another of her hymns, consisting of the second, fourth and fifth stanzas of her poem entitled “In Affliction,” beginning
These, and some other religious poems, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc. None of her hymns are now in use. H.W.F. Mott, Rev. Frederick B., England, 1856-1941, England. When a young man he emigrated to this country and on September 30, 1887 was ordained minister of the Barton Square Church (Unitarian) in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1892 he became minister of the Third Religious Society in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which he served till 1903. In 1904 he returned to England and was installed as minister of the Unitarian Chapel at Southport, and later moved to London as editor of the periodical Christian Life. Two hymns in the Universalist Church Harmonies, 1895, are attributed to him, viz:—
but appear to have had no further use. H.W.F. Newell, Rev. William, D.D., Littleton, Massachusetts, February 25, 1804—October 28, 1881, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1824 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1829. He was ordained minister of the First Parish in Cambridge on May 19, 1830, where he served until his retirement on March 31, 1868. He was author of many commemorative sermons and memoirs, and received the honorary degree of D.D. from Harvard in 1853. A number of his poems are included in Putnam, Singers and Songs, etc. His hymn beginning,
is included in G. Horder’s Worship Song, with Tunes, London, 1905, but is not found in American collections. J. 1676 H.W.F. Norton, Prof. Andrews, Hingham, Massachusetts, December 31, 1786—September 18, 1853, Newport, Rhode Island. He graduated from Harvard in 1804. In 1811 he was appointed tutor in the College, in 1813 librarian and Lecturer on the Bible, and in 1819 Professor of Sacred Literature in the Harvard Divinity School, a post which he resigned in 1830 to devote himself to literary and theological pursuits. In 1837 he published the first volume of his famous book The Genuineness of the Gospels, followed in 1844 by the second and third volumes. This was the earliest scholarly work on the New Testament by an American author, and expressed the conservative Unitarian thought of his period. He wrote several other books, and numerous articles. His few poems were printed in a small volume soon after his death, including six hymns, some of which have had considerable use.
Of the above nos. 1, 4, 5 were included in Martineau’s Hymns, London, 1873. Nos. 4 and 6 are in the Unitarian New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and no. 6 is in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. See Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith for the full text of all Norton’s hymns. J. 810 Revised by H.W.F. Parker, Rev. Theodore, was born on a farm in Lexington, Massachusetts on August 24, 1810, and died in Florence, Italy, on May 10, 1860. He entered Harvard College in 1830, but did most of his work at home, and studied in the Harvard Divinity School, 1834-1836. In 1840 he was granted the degree of A.M. from Harvard. Entering the ministry he served the Unitarian Church in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1837-1846, and the 28th Congregational Society, Boston, 1846-1860. He was a famous preacher; author of numerous printed discourses on social and religious problems; and one of the earliest American translators of current German theological literature. He wrote a few poems, none intended for use as hymns, but Longfellow and Johnson took one of his sonnets and, by eliminating two lines, transformed it into a hymn of 3 stanzas of 4 lines each beginning,
which they included in their Book of Hymns, 1846. It has had widespread and long continued use in American hymn-books and to some extent in England. Twelve of Parker’s poetical pieces are included in A. P. Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith. Biographies of Parker have been written by John Weiss, Octavius B. Frothingham, and other authors. J. 882 H.W.F. Peabody, Rev. Ephraim, Wilton, New Hampshire, March 22, 1807—November 28, 1856, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1827, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1830. After serving as a tutor in the Huidekoper family in Meadville, Pennsylvania, he was ordained in 1832 as minister of a recently gathered Unitarian congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1837 he joined Rev. John H. Morison in serving the First Congregational Society of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and in 1845 he accepted a call to King’s Chapel, Boston, where he remained until his death, though ill-health prevented him from preaching in the last year and a half of his life. An impressive preacher, he also wrote some poetry, and a hymn for an ordination, beginning
is attributed to him in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. H.W.F. Peabody, Rev. Oliver William Bourne, Exeter, New Hampshire, July 9, 1799—July 5, 1847, Burlington, Vermont. He was twin brother of W. B. O. Peabody, q.v. He graduated from Harvard College in 1817, practised law for a few years at Exeter, served as professor of English Literature in Jefferson College, Louisiana from 1842 to 1845, and in the latter year was licensed to preach by the Boston Association and served as minister of the Unitarian Church at Burlington, Vermont, until his death two years later. A hymn beginning
is attributed to him in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, but does not appear to have had further use. J. 887 H.W.F. Peabody, Rev. William Bourne Oliver, D.D., Exeter, New Hampshire, July 9, 1799—May 28, 1847, Springfield, Massachusetts. Graduated from Harvard College in 1817, taught for a year in Phillips Exeter Academy, and studied for the ministry at the Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained as the first minister of the Unitarian Church in Springfield, Massachusetts, in October, 1820, and remained there until his death. In 1823 he published a Poetical Catechism for the Young, in which he included some original hymns. He edited The Springfield Collection of Hymns for Sacred Worship, Springfield, 1835, which was adopted for use in many parishes besides his own, and several of his hymns were included in it. A Memoir of him, written by his twin brother, O. W. B. Peabody, was published in the 2d edition of his Sermons, 1849, and a collection of his Literary Remains was published in 1850. He is described as “a man of rare accomplishments, and consummate virtue,” widely respected and admired. The following hymns by him had considerable use in the 19th century, but only the last survived in a hymn book of the 20th.
The full texts of Peabody’s hymns are printed in Putnam, Singers & Songs of the Liberal Faith, Boston, 1874. J. 887 Revised by H.W.F. Perkins, Rev. James Handasyde, Boston, Massachusetts, July 31, 1810—December 14, 1849, near Cincinnati, Ohio. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and at Round Hill School, Northampton, Massachusetts. After a brief business experience in Boston he moved to Cincinnati, where he was admitted to the bar in 1837, but two years later he took up the Ministry-at-Large organized by the First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of Cincinnati, and later became pastor of the church. He was active in social reforms and as a lecturer, and was author of a number of essays descriptive of life in what was then the far west. The hymn in 3 stanzas, C.M., beginning
attributed to “J. H. Perkins” in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846-48, is presumably by him, although it is not included with his poems printed in the Memoir and Writings of James Handasyde Perkins, edited by W. H. Channing, Cincinnati, 1851. It does not appear to have had any further use. H.W.F. Pierpont, Rev. John, Litchfield, Connecticut, April 6, 1785—August 27, 1866, Medford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale College in 1804, studied law, and in 1812 set up practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts, but later turned to the ministry and graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1818. That fall he became minister of the Hollis Street Church (Unitarian) in Boston, which he served till 1840, when a sharp controversy over his outspoken attacks on intemperance, slavery and other social evils led to his resignation. In the same year he published his Poems and Hymns, which included his temperance and anti-slavery poems and songs, and of which a later edition appeared in 1854. He also wrote a number of excellent school books. In 1845 he became minister of the Unitarian Church at Troy, New York, and in 1849 of the First Parish in Medford, Massachusetts, which he served until 1859, when he retired. With the outbreak of the Civil War he became an Army chaplain and was later employed in the Treasury Department at Washington. He died suddenly while on a visit to Medford. He was the maternal grandfather of J. Pierpont Morgan of New York, who was named for him, but it would be hard to find a greater contrast than that offered by the careers of the hymn-writing reformer and his grandson, the financial magnate. In his own day Pierpont’s hymns brought him a wide reputation. Thus Putnam, in his Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith, 1873, says, “Mr. Pierpont was one of the best hymn writers in America. He was a genuine poet, as well as a powerful preacher and stern reformer.” Today he occupies a much more modest place in American hymnody. None of his hymns attained a very high level of excellence. Most of them are respectable verse, written in His hymns which have come into use are
All of the above hymns have passed out of use except nos. 1, J. 895, 1647 Revised by H.W.F. Pray, Lewis Glover, Quincy, Massachusetts, August 15, 1793—October 9, 1882, Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was a business man in Boston, active in civic and church affairs. For 33 years he was superintendent of the Sunday School in the Twelfth Congregational Society of Boston. In 1833 he published a Sunday School Hymn Book, the first book containing music published for Sunday Schools in New England. It appeared in enlarged form in 1844 as the Sunday School Hymn and Service Book. In 1847 he published his History of Sunday Schools. His own hymns and poems were published in 1862 as The Sylphids’ School, and in a second volume, Autumn Leaves, 1873. Most of them are songs for Sunday School use rather than hymns for the church service but one of them, from The Sylphids’ School, beginning
was included in Hymns of the Ages. 3d Series, 1864. J. 906 H.W.F. Prince, Rev. Thomas, D.D., Sandwich, Massachusetts, May 15, 1687—October 22, 1758, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1707. After voyages to Barbadoes and a stay of several years in England he returned to Boston and in 1717 was ordained as colleague of Rev. Joseph Sewall, minister of the Old South Church. His career was marked by frequent controversies and by his Chronological History of New England, based on his great collection of rare documents dating from the early years of the Colony. This priceless collection was unfortunately dispersed and much of it lost after his death. During his ministry the Tate and Brady version of the Psalms was gradually replacing the Bay Psalm Book in New England, but his parishioners clung to the old book. He persuaded them to let him revise it, which he did, improving or modernizing the verse and printing after the Psalms “an addition of Fifty other Hymns on the most important subjects of Christianity.” It included one hymn by himself beginning
His collection was published in 1758 and was first used in the Old South Meeting House on the Sunday following his death. Its use there continued for another 30 years, but it was not adopted elsewhere, the Bay Psalm Book being by that time generally superseded by collections of Watts and Select. H.W.F. Putnam, Rev. Alfred Porter, D. D. Danvers, Massachusetts, January 10, 1827—April 15, 1906, Salem, Massachusetts. He was educated at Brown University, A.B. 1852, and graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1855. Entering the Unitarian ministry he served a church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1855-1864, and the Church of the Saviour, Brooklyn, New York, 1864-1886, when he retired. Brown University gave him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1871. He wrote no hymns but published in 1874 a book entitled Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith: being selections of hymns and other sacred poems of the Liberal Church in America, with biographical sketches of the writers. This book includes practically all the hymns by American Unitarian authors which had come into use prior to 1870, and the biographical sketches are generally accurate and adequate in brief space. This useful reference book is elsewhere referred to in this Dictionary as Putnam: Singers and Songs. H.W.F. Robbins, Rev. Chandler, D.D., Lynn, Massachusetts, February 14, 1810—September 12, 1882, Westport, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1833. On December 4th of the same year he was ordained minister of the Second Church (Unitarian), Boston, in succession to Henry Ware, Jr. and R. W. Emerson. He received the honorary degree of D.D. from Harvard in 1855. He was the author of a number of books, essays and memorial discourses dealing with local events and persons. In 1843 he published The Social Hymn Book, intended for social gatherings rather than for church services, and in 1854 an enlarged edition entitled Hymn Book for Christian Worship, though this book does not give his name as editor. He contributed two hymns to A Collection of Psalms and Hymns for the Sanctuary, 1845, compiled by George E. Ellis.
J. 966 H.W.F. Robbins, Rev. Samuel Dowse, Lynn, Massachusetts, March 7, 1812—?1884, Belmont, Massachusetts, he was a brother of Chandler Robbins, q.v. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1833 and on November 13 of the same year was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church in Lynn. He subsequently held pastorates in Chelsea (1840), Framingham (1859) and Wayland, Massachusetts, 1867-1873. He wrote a good many poems on religious themes, which were published in magazines and newspapers but were never collected in a volume. The Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book, 1868, included four of his hymns, viz:
Julian’s Dictionary, p. 967, also cites one beginning
but it is a religious poem rather than a hymn and there is no evidence that it was included in any hymn book. J. 967 Revised H.W.F. Sargent, Lucius Manlius, Boston, Massachusetts, June 25, 1786—June 2, 1867, Boston. A layman of independent means, author of many articles advocating temperance. His temperance hymn beginning
“was written during the Washingtonian Temperance Revival” and appeared in Adams’ and Chapin’s Unitarian Hymns for Christian Devotion, Boston, 1846. In the American Methodist Episcopal Hymnal, 1878 the first line is altered to read
The hymn is included, with the original wording, in the Universalist Church Harmonies, 1895. J. 1061 H.W.F. Savage, Rev. Minot Judson, D.D., Norridgewock, Maine, June 10, 1841—May 22, 1918, Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were strictly orthodox Congregationalists whose resources were meagre, but a generous benefactor made it possible for him to enter Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1864. He served as a Congregational minister in California, Massachusetts and Missouri, but, having become acquainted with the works of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, he transferred his membership to the Unitarian denomination in 1872 and became minister of the Third Unitarian Church in Chicago. Two years later he accepted a call to Unity Church in Boston, which he served until 1896 when he moved to New York as minister of the Church of the
Of these nos. 4, 6, 7 and 11 are included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1698 H.W.F. Scudder, Eliza, Boston, Massachusetts, November 14, 1821—September 28, 1896, Weston, Massachusetts. She was a niece of Rev. E. H. Sears, q.v. Early in life she joined a Congregational Church, throughout her middle years was a Unitarian, and late in life entered the Episcopal Church. She wrote a small number of poems which were published in Boston in 1880 under the title Hymns and Sonnets, by E.S., and again with her two latest poems and a brief biographical sketch by Horace E. Scudder, in 1897, but most of her hymns had appeared at earlier dates in other places. They are characterized by a profound mystical spirit expressed in terms of great literary beauty, and some of them passed into a considerable measure of common use.
Of these hymns nos. 3, 4 (selected stanzas), 7, 9 and 10 are included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and nos. 3, 7 and 9 in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1035, 1589, 1700 H.W.F. Sears, Rev. Edmund Hamilton; Sandisfield, Massachusetts April 6, 1810—January 16, 1876, Weston, Massachusetts. Studied at Union College, graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1837. Ordained minister of the First Parish (Unitarian) of Wayland, Massachusetts, on February 20, 1839. He soon after went to Lancaster, Massachusetts; returned to Wayland, 1848-1864; and was minister of the First Parish, Weston, Massachusetts, 1866 until his death. He was author of many books and printed sermons, and of a good many poems, often hymns supplementary to his sermons. None of these, however, have come into general use, and his reputation as a hymn writer is based on his two widely used Christmas hymns, found in many hymn books. The first,
was written in 1839. It was included as “Anon.” in The Christian Psalter, published in 1841 by Sears’ friend, Rev. W. P. Lunt, q.v. of Quincy, Massachusetts. In the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, the second line of sta. 6
was changed to read
but the original reading was restored in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. His second hymn,
was written in 1849. One tradition about it reports that it was written at Mr. Lunt’s request and was first used at the Christmas celebration of the Sunday School in Quincy in that year. Sta. 5 of this hymn For lo! the days are hastening on By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold; When peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendors fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing has appeared in re-written forms more than once because its “backward look” to a golden age is not Biblical but is derived from the Fourth Eclogue of the poet Virgil. In the Episcopal Hymnal of 1874 this is altered to read For lo, the days are hastening on By prophets seen of old, Till with the ever circling years Shall come the time foretold, When the new heaven and earth shall own The Prince of Peace their King- - - - and this version was reprinted in the Episcopal hymnals of 1892 and 1916, and passed into other collections. In the Hymnal, 1940, it was again altered to read For lo, the days are hastening on By prophets seen of old, When with the ever circling years Shall come the time foretold These alterations may have brought the hymn into closer accord with orthodox theology, but at the expense of some of its poetic Two patriotic songs by Sears were included in the army hymn book, The Soldier’s Companion, 1861. One headed “A Psalm of Freedom” begins,
The other is headed “Song of the Stars and Stripes,” and begins,
Neither has any great merit, though both may have served the purpose for which they were written. J. 1036 H.W.F. Sewall, C. An anti-slavery hymn attributed to a person of this name is included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853. It begins,
It is probable, but not certain, that the author was Rev. Charles Chauncy Sewall, Marblehead, Massachusetts, May 10, 1802—November 22, 1886, Medfield, Massachusetts; who was a graduate of Bowdoin College and who received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard in 1832. He was a Unitarian minister serving churches in Peabody, Massachusetts, 1827-1841; Sharon, Massachusetts, 1857-1862; and Medfield, 1873-1377. H.W.F. Sigourney, Mrs. Lydia Howard (Huntley), Norwich, Connecticut, September 1, 1791—June 10, 1865, Hartford, Connecticut, wife of Charles Sigourney. She was a prolific writer of prose and verse contributed to many periodicals, and author of many books, chiefly moral tales for young people. She became a very popular writer and spent two years, 1840-1842, in England where she met many celebrities. Two hymns by her were included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, viz:
J. 1057, 1589. H.W.F. Sill, Edward Rowland, Windsor, Connecticut, April 29, 1841—February 27, 1887, Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Yale in 1861 and spent several months in the year 1866-1867 at the Harvard Divinity School, writing his one fine hymn,
for the School’s Visitation Day exercises in 1867. It was included in his collection of poems, The Hermitage, published the same year, and passed thence into many American hymnbooks. Presumably he entered the Divinity School intending to prepare for the Unitarian ministry, but he did not do so and neither then nor later associated himself with any denomination. At the end of the academic year 1867 he moved to California where he was Professor of English Literature, 1874-1882 at the University of California. He published several books of poems of superior quality. J. 1703 H.W.F. Silliman, Rev. Vincent Brown, D.D., Hudson, Wisconsin, June 29, 1894—still living. He graduated from Meadville Theological School in 1920 and from the University of Minnesota in 1925. He has served Unitarian churches in Buffalo, New York; Portland, Maine; Hollis, New York; and Chicago, Illinois. He was a member of the committee which edited The Beacon Song and Service Book for Children and Young People, 1935, and edited We Sing of Life, 1955, an unusual collection of songs for children and young people, with a strong ethical emphasis, some set to familiar hymn tunes, others to interesting folk music. Mr. Silliman contributed the words of several songs. One of them, beginning,
is also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, set to St. Elizabeth (Crusader’s Hymn). H.W.F. Spencer, Mrs. Anna Garlin, (wife of Rev. William H. Spencer), Attleboro, Massachusetts, April 17, 1851—February 12, 1931, New York. She was ordained as a Unitarian minister, and was a lecturer and author of books on social problems. In 1896 in her “Orders of Service for Public Worship” she included her song entitled “The Marching Song of the Workers,” beginning,
set to St. Gertrude. It was included in Hymns of the United Church, 1924, in Songs of Work and Worship, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Sprague, Charles, Boston, Massachusetts, October 22, 1791—January 22, 1875, Boston. A Unitarian layman. Although a business man without a college education he wrote much verse which brought him a considerable reputation and requests for poems to celebrate special occasions. One of them was read before the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in Cambridge in 1829, and was re-published, with minor alterations, a few years later in Calcutta by a British officer, as his own work. A collection of his poems was published in 1841, and an enlarged edition in 1850. A number of his shorter poems are given in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, and a hymn attributed to “C. Sprague” is included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, beginning
H.W.F. Trapp, Rev. Jacob, S.T.D., Muskegon, Michigan, April 12, 1899—still living. He was educated at Valparaiso University and The Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry (now called The Starr King School for the Ministry). He was ordained in 1929 and has served Unitarian churches in Salt Lake City, Utah; Denver, Colorado; and Summit, New Jersey. In 1932 he wrote a hymn beginning,
which is included, with some revisions, in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Tuckerman, Rev. Joseph, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, January 18, 1778—April 20, 1840, Havana, Cuba. He graduated from Harvard College in 1798, a classmate of Rev. William Ellery Channing, whose close friend he remained through life. He was licensed to preach by the Boston Association and in 1801 was ordained minister of a church in Chelsea, Massachusetts, at that time a small farming community, which he served for 25 years. He then moved to Boston to begin his “ministry-at-large” to the unchurched elements in the population, under the auspices of the American Unitarian Association and later of the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches. He attained wide reputation for his philanthropy and his wide methods of social reform. Harvard gave him the honorary degree of D.D. in 1824. His hymn
is attributed to “Tuckerman” in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, and in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, but is not listed in Julian’s Dictionary or included in later collections. H.W.F. Very, Jones, Salem, Massachusetts, August 28, 1813—May 8, 1880, Salem, Massachusetts. He was brother of Washington Very, q.v. He graduated from Harvard College in 1836, and served as tutor in Greek there for two years. Although Julian, Dictionary, p. 1219, says that he entered the Unitarian ministry in 1843, he was never ordained as a settled minister though he served frequently as an occasional lay preacher. Most of his life was given to literary pursuits. In 1839 he published Essays and Poems, and thereafter was a frequent contributor in prose and verse to periodicals, including The Christian Register and the Monthly Magazine. The following hymns by him have passed into various American Unitarian collections.
These four, from Essays and Hymns, were included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846, as were also three from other sources:—
Longfellow and Johnson’s second book, Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, also included
Most of these hymns are in Lyra Sacra Americana and in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc. Two other of his hymns have been published in later collections, viz:
Of the hymns listed above nos. 2 and 3 are included in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, and in other publications. Another hymn beginning
included in Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, and there marked Anon., is attributed to Very in Julian’s Dictionary. The hymn is an abbreviated and mutilated version of the beautiful poem beginning There is a world we have not seen in A. M. Buchanan’s Folk Hymns of America, pp. 80-81. (See H. W. Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody, p. 173). The original form is in three stanzas of eight lines, long metre. The very inferior re-written form is in four stanzas, four lines, common metre. Some of the lines are unchanged from the original, others altered, and the last stanza is a didactic addition. It is altogether improbable that this was done by Very. J. 1219, 1721 H.W.F. Very, Washington, Salem, Massachusetts, November 12, 1815—April 28, 1853, Salem. He graduated from Harvard College in 1843, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1846. After preaching for a year without settlement he opened a private school in Salem, which he conducted until his death. He was brother of Jones Very, q.v. Putnam in Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith includes three of W. Very’s poetical pieces, one of which
appeared in Longfellow and Johnson’s Book of Hymns, 1846. J. 1219 H.W.F. Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr., D.D., Hingham, Massachusetts, April 21, 1794—September 22, 1843, Framingham, Massachusetts. His family was for three generations an outstanding one in the liberal ministry; his father, Dr. Henry Ware, Sr., was called in 1805 from a pastorate in Hingham to serve as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard; his younger brother, William Ware, was the first minister of what is now All Souls Church, New York; and his son, J. F. W. Ware, was later the minister of Arlington Street Church, Boston. Henry Ware, Jr. graduated with high honors from Harvard in 1812, and after teaching for two years at Phillips Exeter Academy returned to Cambridge, to continue his theological studies. He was licensed to preach on July 31, 1815, but was not ordained as minister of the Second Church in Boston (Unitarian) until January 1, 1817. Never vigorous in body, he offered his resignation in 1829, but the congregation refused to accept it, appointing R. W. Emerson to be assistant minister. In 1830, however, he resigned, to accept an appointment as Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care at the Harvard Divinity School, a position which he held till 1842. He then moved from Cambridge to Framingham, Massachusetts, where he died a few months later. Harvard gave him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1834. In spite of ill health he wrote much, and he was a greatly beloved teacher, whose saintly character commanded the highest respect. For several years he edited the Christian Disciple, established in 1813, and he was author of many printed books, addresses and sermons, listed in the Memoir of him, published by his brother, Dr. John Ware, in 1846. His collected works were published in four volumes in 1847, the first volume including his occasional poems and his hymns. Some of these last reached a high standard
None of the hymns listed above are in current use except nos. 1 and 5, both of which are included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1233, 1595 Revised by H.W.F. Waterston, Rev. Robert Cassie, Kennebunk, Maine, 1812—February 21, 1893, Boston, Massachusetts. He studied for a time at the Harvard Divinity School. In 1844 Harvard gave him the degree of Master of Arts, following the publication of his book on Moral and Spiritual Culture. In 1839 he was ordained to the ministry-at-large (Unitarian) in Boston, in charge of the Pitts Street Chapel, where he remained till 1845. From 1845 to 1852 he served as minister of the Church of the Saviour, Boston, and from 1854 to 1856 he was minister of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Thereafter he gave himself to educational and literary pursuits. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and was long active on the Boston School Committee. He wrote many essays, addresses and poems, the most important of which are listed in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc., pp. 390-410. He contributed one hymn to the Cheshire Pastoral Association’s Christian Hymns, 1844, and eight to his own Supplement to Greenwood’s Psalms and Hymns, 1845.
All of these hymns, and a number of other poems by Waterston, are included in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, etc., but few of them are dated or annotated as to use. The author was a popular writer of verses which were respectable expressions of the religious thought and feeling of his community, in which they had considerable vogue, but they rarely rise above mediocrity and have long since dropped out of use. J. 1235, 1724 H.W.F. Weir, Hon. Robert Stanley, D.C.L. 1856-1926. Judge in Admiralty of the Exchequer Court of Canada. He translated, from the original French by Calixa LavallÉe, the hymn beginning, in his English version,
which was adopted by the Canadian government as Canada’s national hymn. It is included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914. He was a member of the Church of the Messiah (Unitarian), Montreal. H.W.F. Weiss, Rev. John, Boston, Massachusetts, June 28, 1828—March 9, 1879, Boston. He graduated from Harvard College in 1837, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1843. He was ordained minister of the First Church, (Unitarian) Watertown, Massachusetts in 1843; was minister of the First Church, New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1847-1858; and served the church at Watertown again 1862-1869. He was a leader in the anti-slavery movement and a prolific author of books and essays. For Visitation Day at the Divinity School, 1843, he wrote a hymn beginning,
His hymn
Three other hymns by him, which have not found their way into any hymn books, are printed in Putnam’s Singers and Songs. H.W.F. Wendte, Rev. Charles William, Boston, Massachusetts, June 11, 1844—September 9, 1911, San Francisco, California. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1869 and served Unitarian churches in Chicago, Illinois; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Newport, Rhode Island. From 1885 to 1900 he was engaged in denominational work on the Pacific Coast and thereafter was Secretary for Foreign Affairs of the American Unitarian Association, Boston, spending a part of each year in Europe. Long interested in Sunday Schools he published in 1886 The Carol, for Sunday School and Home; a book of songs for use by children and young people entitled Jubilate Deo in 1900; and another in 1908 entitled Heart and Voice, a Collection of Songs and Services for the Sunday-School and Home. In 1907 he wrote a hymn on “The City of God” beginning,
which was included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, (with a slight alteration by the author). H.W.F. Westwood, Rev. Horace, D.D., Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, August 17, 1884—December 24, 1956, Clearwater, Florida. Emigrating to the United States, he served in the Methodist ministry for several years, and after 1910 served as minister in Unitarian churches in Youngstown, Ohio; Winnipeg, Canada; Toledo, Ohio; and extensively as a mission preacher. His hymn in one stanza,
was included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, and he privately printed a small collection, Some Hymns and Verses, n.d., a few of which appeared in periodicals, but have not had wider use. H.W.F. Wile, Mrs. Frances Whitmarsh, Bristol Centre, New York, December 2, 1878—July 31, 1939, Rochester, New York. Married A. J. Wile in 1901. Her lovely hymn for use in winter, beginning,
was written about 1907 while she was a parishioner of Rev. William C. Gannett, q.v., in Rochester, New York, in consultation with him, and was included in Gannett and Hosmer’s revised edition of Unity Hymns and Chorals, 1911, from which it passed into The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Wiley, Hiram Ozias, Middlebury, Vermont, May 20, 1831—January 28, 1873, Peabody, [Danvers] Massachusetts. He was a Unitarian layman who practised law in Peabody from 1855 until his death, and was the author of occasional verse contributed to local newspapers. On May 17, 1865, the South Danvers Wizard published his hymn beginning
and republished it on May 8, 1867, with a note reading “Some years ago we published the following poem, which was written for our columns by H. O. Wiley, Esq. Since then it has traversed the country in all directions, without any credit being given either to our paper or to the author. We reproduce it from a Western paper in order to correct several errors that have crept into it. Ed.” It is the only hymn included in the small volume of Wiley’s poems published as a memorial to him soon after his death. Its earliest appearance in a hymn book was in the 1873 Supp. to the Unitarian Sunday School Hymn Book, with the first line changed to
About the same time it reached England, where it passed into a number of collections without the name of the author. In Julian’s Dictionary, p. 1647, “J.M.” states that it appears as Anon. in Our Home beyond the Tide, Glasgow, 1878, and that in Meth. Free. Ch. Hys., 1889, it is attributed to “Count Zinzendorf, about 1750. Tr. H.L.L.” (Jane Borthwick) although that attribution is questioned because the hymn could not be found in any of Miss Borthwick’s translations. The mistaken attribution persisted, however, long enough to be included in the second edition of H.W.F. Willard, Rev. Samuel, 1776-1859. He graduated from Harvard College in 1803, served the First Church (Unitarian) in Deerfield, Massachusetts 1807 to 1829, when he resigned on account of blindness. In 1823 he published a collection of 158 songs, composed by himself, and in 1830 a compilation entitled “Sacred Music and Poetry Reconciled,” a hymnbook containing 518 hymns by various authors, about 180 of them written by himself. This book was adopted for use in the Third Parish in Hingham, Massachusetts where Willard was then living, but had little circulation elsewhere, and none of his hymns came into general use. H.W.F. Williams, Velma Curtis (Wright), East Boston, Massachusetts, July 29, 1852—January 22, 1941, Boston, Massachusetts. Wife of Rev. Theodore C. Williams, q.v. Her Hymnal: Amore Dei, compiled by Mrs. Theodore C. Williams, was published in Boston in 1890, revised edition 1897. It was edited with the assistance of her husband, then minister of All Souls’ Church, New York, where it was used, and in many other churches as well. Mrs. Williams herself wrote no hymns. J. 1604 H.W.F. Williams, Rev. Theodore Chickering, Brookline, Massachusetts, July 2, 1855—May 6, 1915, Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1876, and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1882. He was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church in Winchester, Massachusetts, in 1882, but became minister of All Souls’ Church, New York in 1883. He resigned in 1896, and spent two years in Europe. After his return he served as headmaster of Hackley School, Tarrytown, New York, 1899-1905. A classical scholar, and gifted as a poet, he published a fine metrical translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, wrote a number of hymns which are religious poetry of a high order, and assisted his wife, Velma C. Williams, q.v., in compiling her Hymnal: Amore Dei, 1890, revised edition 1897. A few of his hymns appeared in this book and, with others of later date, are included in The New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, as follows:
Three other hymns by him, included in Amore Dei, have not come into general use, viz.:
Of the above all from nos. 1 to 11 are included in the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and, except no. 9, in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, which also includes no. 12. Nos. 5, 11 and 12 are in the Pilgrim Hymnal, 1934. J. 1728 H.W.F. Willis, Love Maria (Whitcomb), Hancock, New Hampshire, June 9, 1824—November 26, 1908, Elmira, New York. She married Frederick L. E. Willis, M.D., of Boston, in 1858. She was for some years one of the editors of The Banner of Light, Boston, and of Tiffany’s Monthly Magazine, and was a frequent contributor to these and other periodicals. She wrote a number of hymns, one of which, beginning,
was published in Tiffany’s Monthly in 1859. In Longfellow and Johnson’s Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, it was considerably rewritten, with the opening line changed to read,
and was cited as “Anon.” This 1864 text came into considerable use in various collections in England, and was included in The English Hymnal as late as 1906. It has also had wide use in America and will be found in almost all Unitarian hymn books since 1864, most recently in the New Hymn and Tune Book, 1914, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. J. 1728 H.W.F. Willis, Nathaniel Parker, Portland, Maine, January 20, 1807—January 29, 1867. He graduated from Yale College in 1826. A journalist and editor, he wrote for the American Monthly and the New York Mirror. From 1831 to 1837 he was in Europe attached to the American Legation at the French Court. On his return he became, in 1839, one of the editors of The Corsair. His works are numerous and include Sacred Poems, 1843. His hymn
was “Written to be sung at the Consecration of Hanover Street [Unitarian] Church, Boston,” in 1826. It was included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, and in a good many other collections, although of no exceptional merit. J. 1285 H.W.F. Wilson, Rev. Edwin Henry, D.D. Chester Park, Long Island, New York, August 23, 1898—still living. He graduated from Boston University, 1922; from Meadville Theological School, 1926; and took the degree of M.A. at the University of Chicago, 1928. He has served as minister of Unitarian churches in Chicago, Illinois; Schenectady, New York; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Since 1949 he has been Director of the American Humanist Association. His hymn beginning,
written in 1928, is included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Wilson, Rev. Lewis Gilbert, Southboro, Massachusetts, February 19, 1858—April 24, 1928, Floral City, Florida. He studied at Dartmouth, Harvard and Meadville Theological School, and in 1883 was ordained minister of the Unitarian Church at Leicester, Massachusetts. Later he served the Unitarian church at Hopedale, Massachusetts, and from 1907-1915 was Secretary in the American Unitarian Association. While there he was a member of the committee which edited The New Hymn and Tune Book published in 1914 by the Association. This book included three of his hymns, beginning
all three of which were written in 1912. The first of these is also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937. H.W.F. Young, George H. (No information available) A hymn of 4 stanzas, L.M., beginning,
is attributed to him in the Isles of Shoals Hymn Book, 1908. H.W.F. |
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