Near the Cross Fanny J. Crosby, 1869

Fanny J. Crosby

1820-03-24 to 1915

Fanny Crosby was born in Southeast, Putnam County, New York, on March 24, 1820. She lost her sight at about six weeks old after an illness and poor medical treatment. She began writing Sunday school hymns for William B. Bradbury in 1864, and her first hymn appeared that year in The Golden Censer. On March 5, 1858, she married Alexander Van Alstyne, a blind musician she had met at the New York Institution for the Blind. Hymnary counts about eight thousand poems, including more than four thousand hymns for Biglow and Main, and she used nearly two hundred pen names. Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology gives her birth year as 1823, which differs from the other sources.

William H. Doane

1832-02-03 to 1915

William Howard Doane was born in Preston, Connecticut. He ran a large woodworking machinery plant in Cincinnati and led civic work there. He supported the evangelistic work of Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey and helped endow Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He wrote more than 2,200 hymn and gospel song tunes and edited more than forty songbooks. His first Sunday school hymnbook, Sabbath Gems, appeared in 1861. He set many texts by Fanny J. Crosby, including To God Be the Glory.