“When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder”: the hymn a Sunday school teacher wrote for a missing pupil
James Milton Black, a Sunday school teacher and songwriter in Pennsylvania, wrote "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder" in 1893 after a girl in his…
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gospel hymns
“There Shall Be Showers of Blessing”: Daniel Whittle’s hymn of revival
"There Shall Be Showers of Blessing" was written by Daniel Webster Whittle, a former Civil War officer turned evangelist, with music by James McGranahan. Based on…
“Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross”: Fanny Crosby’s prayer set to William Doane’s tune
Fanny Crosby wrote "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" in 1869 to a melody by William Howard Doane. The simple prayer to stay close to the…
Moody and Sankey: the preacher and the singer who filled halls on two continents
Dwight L. Moody, a former shoe salesman, and Ira D. Sankey, a singer from Pennsylvania, led huge evangelistic campaigns in America and Britain in the 1870s.…
A farmhand picking cotton hummed a secular song and thought of heaven: “I’ll Fly Away”
Albert E. Brumley wrote "I'll Fly Away" in 1929 while picking cotton on his family's farm in Oklahoma, reportedly humming a secular ballad about a prisoner…
“On a hill far away”: George Bennard, a travelling evangelist, and the story of “The Old Rugged Cross”
George Bennard, a Methodist evangelist, wrote "The Old Rugged Cross" in 1912 and it was first sung publicly in 1913 in Michigan. It became one of…