Fanny Crosby

Fanny Crosby

Frances Jane Crosby (March 24, 1820 – February 12, 1915), usually known as Fanny Crosby in the United States, and by her married name, Frances van Alstyne in the United Kingdom, was an American Methodist rescue mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer who was during her lifetime one of the best known women in the United States, and was by the end of the nineteenth century "a household name in evangelical Protestant circles" globally, and "one of the most prominent figures in American evangelical life", being one of the shapers of American culture, helping to "embed Christianity in the history and culture of the United States.

Best known for her Protestant Christian hymns and gospel songs, Crosby was "the premier hymnist of the gospel song period (ca. 1870-1920)", and one of the most prolific hymnists in history, writing over 8,000 despite being blind since infancy, with over 100 million copies of her songs printed. Crosby was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1975. Known as the "Queen of Gospel Song Writers", and as the "Mother of modern congregational singing in America", with "dozens of her hymns continue to find a place in the hymnals of Protestant evangelicalism around the world", with most American hymnals containing her work, as "with the possible exception of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, Crosby has generally been represented by the largest number of hymns of any writer of the twentieth century in nonliturgical hymnals". Her gospel songs were "paradigmatic of all revival music", and Ira Sankey attributed the success of the Moody and Sankey evangelical campaigns largely to Crosby's hymns. Some of Crosby's best-known songs include "Blessed Assurance", "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour", "Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home", "Praise Him, Praise Him", "Rescue the Perishing", and "To God Be the Glory". Because some publishers were hesitant to have so many hymns by one person in their hymnals, Crosby used nearly 200 different pseudonyms during her career.

Crosby wrote over 1,000 secular poems, and had four books of poetry published, as well as two best-selling autobiographies. Crosby was the subject of at least a dozen biographies. Additionally, Crosby co-wrote popular secular songs, as well as political and patriotic songs, and at least five cantatas on biblical and patriotic themes, including The Flower Queen, the first secular cantata by American composers. Crosby was committed to Christian rescue missions, and was known for her public speaking.

Early life and education

Birthplace of Fanny Crosby

Frances Jane "Fanny" Crosby was born on March 24, 1820, in her parents' small gray single-story clapboard Cape Cod farmhouse built in 1758, near a brook of the East Branch Croton River, and standing just back from a quiet country road, Gayville Road, Gayville (now Foggintown Road, in the village of Brewster), in the township of Southeast, Putnam County, New York. about fifty miles north of New York City, near the Connecticut border.

Fanny Crosby was the only child of John Crosby (born 1797 in Bridgeport, Connecticut; died November 1820), a poor widower, who had a daughter from his first marriage; and his second wife, Mercy Crosby (born May 31, 1799 in Bridgeport, Connecticut; died September 2, 1890 in Bridgeport, Connecticut), both relatives of Revolutionary War spy Enoch Crosby (born January 4, 1750 in Harwich, Massachusetts; died June 26, 1835). According to Bernard Ruffin, John and Mercy were possibly first cousins, however "by the time Fanny Crosby came to write her memoirs [in 1906], the fact that her mother and father were related (and were perhaps first cousins) had become a source of embarrassment, and she maintained that she did not know anything about his lineage". Crosby's family had resided in this locale since her great-great-grandfather Joshua Crosby and his wife, Lydia Hopkins Crosby, moved from Harwich, Massachusetts near Cape Cod to The Oblong, then in Dutchess County, New York in 1749.

Crosby was proud of her Puritan heritage, and revealed in 1903: "My ancestors were Puritans; my family tree rooted around Plymouth Rock". Crosby traced her ancestry from Ann Brigham and Simon Crosby (born in England in 1608; died Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1639), who arrived in Boston in 1635 with Peter Bulkley on the Susan and Ellen, and was one of the founders of Harvard College, and his oldest child, Rev. Thomas Crosby (born 1634 in England; died December 1702 in Boston, Massachusetts), who graduated from Harvard College in 1653, and whose descendants later married into Mayflower families, making Crosby a descendant of Elder William Brewster, Edward Winslow, and Thomas Prence, and later a member of the exclusive Daughters of the Mayflower. Crosby was also later a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Bridgeport, Connecticut, writing the verses of the state song of the Connecticut branch.

Through Simon Crosby and his son, Rev. Thomas Crosby, Crosby was a relative of Presbyterian minister Howard Crosby (1826–1891) and his son, neoabolitionist Ernest Howard Crosby (1856–1907), as well as singers Bing Crosby (1903–1977), and his brother, Bob (1913–1993).

Southeast, New York (1820-1823)

In May 1820, when six weeks old, Crosby caught a cold and developed inflammation of the eyes. As the family physician was out of town, an unschooled traveling doctor who came in his place recommended the application of mustard poultices to treat discharges coming from her eyes. According to Crosby, this procedure damaged her optic nerves and blinded her, however "modern physicians suggest it is much more likely that her blindness was congential", and that "at such an early age her sightless condition may well have escaped her parents".

In November 1820 John Crosby died, after he caught a chill while working in the cold November rain. Crosby was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother, Eunice Paddock Crosby (born October 3, 1778 in New York; died 1831 in Gaysville, New York), the widow of Sylvanus Crosby (born 1769 in Massachusetts; died April 29, 1814 in New York).

As Mercy Crosby worked as a maid to support her daughter, Eunice cared for Crosby during the day, creating an intimate bond between them. Crosby would later write: "My grandmother was more to me than I can ever express by word or pen."

For her first three years Mercy and Eunice Crosby took Fanny Crosby to services at the Southeast Presbyterian Church in the hamlet of Doansburg, New York, which was built in 1794.

North Salem, New York (1823-1828)

Peach Pond Meeting House, North Salem, NY

File:Valentine Mott 1820.jpg

Dr. Valentine Mott

At the age of three, Crosby, her mother and grandmother, moved six miles to North Salem, New York, where Eunice had been raised. While residing in North Salem, the Crosbys attended the Peach Pond Society of Friends meeting house near Peach Lake. As a child Crosby was befriended by Daniel Drew, then a drover, who offered her a lamb.

In April 1825 Mercy Crosby took Crosby to New York City to be examined by Valentine Mott, then "America's premier surgeon", hoping that he might be able to operate to restore her eyesight. After consulting with ophthalmologist Edward Delafield, a co-founder of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, Mott concluded that Crosby's condition was inoperable and that her blindness was permanent.

At the age of eight Crosby wrote her first poem, which described her condition:

Oh what a happy soul I am,

Although I cannot see;

I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy,

That other people don't;

To weep and sigh because I'm blind,

I cannot, and I won't.

According to Billy Graham, despite her blindness Crosby did not spend her life in bitterness and defeat, but instead dedicated her life to Christ. Crosby later remarked: "It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me." Crosby also once said, "when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior". When asked about her blindness, Crosby was reported as saying that "had it not been for her affliction she might not have so good an education or have so great an influence, and certainly not so fine a memory".

Ridgefield, Connecticut (1828-1834)

Map of Ridgefield, CT (1856)

In 1828, when Crosby was eight, Mercy and Crosby moved to the home of a Mrs Hawley, a "Puritan Presbyterian" widow, at 212 Main Street, Ridgefield, Connecticut, adjacent to the corner with Branchville Road, where they boarded in an east-facing room on the second floor. Crosby's mother worked as household servant to support herself and her daughter. While residing in Ridgefield, they attended the Congregational church (from March 1817 to May 1831 it was a Presbyterian church), on the Village Green (now the front lawn of the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church at 207 Main Street), which was across the road from Mrs Hawley's house, making her attendance at both the church services and Sunday School convenient.

During Crosby's sojourn in Ridgefield, the church was pastored by the Presbyterian Samuel M. Phelps (pastor from March 20, 1817, until 1829), and later by the Congregationalist Charles Grandison Selleck (born February 26, 1802 in Darien, Connecticut; died June 1884), an 1827 graduate of Yale College, who was pastor from May 25, 1831 to 1837.

Crosby's mother and grandmother grounded Crosby in Protestant Christian principles, helping her, for example, memorize long passages from the Bible. Historian Edith L. Blumhofer described the Crosby home environment as sustained by "an abiding Christian faith".

"At its center stands the Bible in the classic rendering of the Authorized Version. Crosby frequently admitted its centrality in her childhood home, where the family altar found a regular place. Although she could not read for herself, she memorized Scripture under the patient tutelage of her grandmother. Evidence suggests that this Crosby family pegged its understanding of duty, community, and family to the biblical text. Shaped by the Calvinist reading of Scripture that years before had prompted the family's migration to the New World, the Crosbys of Southeast understood that God had a purpose for whatever happened; they clung to the certainty that God was in control. They knew God as the source of true pleasure and believed that all they had—meager or abundant—came from God's hand. ... As lived out at home — at least in [Fanny] Crosby's recollection — the Calvinism of these sons and daughters of Massachusetts Bay was serious without being dour, joyous without being frivolous. It refreshed the soul while sustaining the body, and so it seemed particularly suited to those who, like the Crosbys, eked out hard, meager livings from the land."

With the encouragement of her grandmother, and later Mrs. Hawley, the Crosbys' landlady, from the age of ten, Crosby had memorized five chapters of the Bible each week, until by the age of fifteen Crosby had memorized the four gospels, the Pentateuch, the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and many of the Psalms.

In 1831 Crosby's grandmother, Eunice, died "worn out by work and disease", aged 53. From 1832, during the winter months a music teacher came to Ridgefield twice a week to give singing lessons to Crosby and some of the other children, using the "The Boston Handel and Haydn Society Collection of Church Music", which was compiled anonymously by Lowell Mason, and first published in 1822.

At the age of 12, Crosby attended her first Methodist church services at the Methodist Episcopal Church, located from 1824 to 1841 on the north side of the fork of North Salem Road and North Street, Ridgefield (now the site of the Ridgefield Cemetery), where she was delighted by their hymns.

North Salem, New York (1834-1835)

As an adolescent, Crosby began to suffer bouts of moodiness and depression.

In the autumn of 1834 Crosby and her mother moved back to Westchester County, New York, where she attended school. In November 1834 Mercy Crosby received a circular from a friend informing them of the New York Institution for the Blind.

New York Institution for the Blind (1835-1845)

New York Institution for the Blind

On Saturday, March 7, 1835, just before her 15th birthday, Crosby became the thirty-first pupil to enrol at the New York Institution for the Blind (NYIB) (now the New York Institute for Special Education), a state-financed asylum that had been founded in April 1831, and opened on March 15, 1832. At the time of her enrolment, there was 41 pupils, of whom 28 were funded by the state of New York, including Crosby, and the Insitution occupied Strawberry Hill, a mansion leased from James Boorman for $100 a year, that was located on a property that encompassed an entire city block between 8th and 9th Avenues and 33rd and 34th Streets, in what was then an undeveloped rural section of Manhattan. During the Financial Panic of 1837, Boorman sold the property to the Blind Institution for $10,000 less than market value, and the state of New York provided funds to renovate the buildings. By 1842 a new three-story Gothic building that could accommodate 200 pupils was constructed of Sing Sing marble with $15,000 appropriated by the New York State Legislature, and additional funds donated by the public.

Crosby remained at the Blind Institution for eight years as a student, and another two years as a graduate pupil, during which she learned to play the piano, organ, harp, and guitar, and became a good soprano singer. Even as an old woman Crosby "would sit at the piano and play everything from classical works to hymns to ragtime. Sometimes she even played old hymns in a jazzed up style." While studying at the Blind Institution, Crosby met William Cullen Bryant, Henry Clay, and Horace Greeley.

While Crosby was studying at the Blind Institution, on February 4, 1838 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, her mother Mercy Crosby married Thomas Morris (born October 15, 1799 in Swansea, Wales; died January 17, 1884 in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory), a Welsh Baptist widower with three children: William Hall Morris (born in Gloucestershire in 1829; died 1880), Jemima Morris Van Cott (born August 4, 1831 in Coleford, Gloucestershire; died March 23, 1851 in Salt Lake City), and Daniel Webster Morris (born October 18, 1837 in Bridgeport, Connecticut; died August 25, 1918 in Hinckley, Utah), one month after they met. Despite frequent marital difficulties and periods of estrangement, Thomas and Mercy Morris had three children together: Wilhemina (born June 5, 1839; died October 1839); Julia "Jule" Athington (born August 9, 1840; died of cancer on January 16, 1922 in Bridgeport, Connecticut); and Caroline "Carrie" Rider (born December 25, 1843; died January 24, 1907 of intestinal cancer).

(l to r) Mercy, Julia, & Caroline Morris and Fanny Crosby

In August 1842 and also in September 1843, Crosby and 19 other Blind Institution students toured New York, often by canal boat, giving concerts to increase awareness of the Institution and its programs, and to recruit prospective students

By June 1844, Crosby's step-father Thomas Morris, who had joined the emerging Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, left for Nauvoo, Illinois with Jemima and Daniel, leaving Crosby's mother, Mercy, to raise her daughters, and Morris' son, William, who had ran away to avoid joining his father. Soon after Crosby returned to Bridgeport to stay with her mother to rest and recuperate, and to help with the children, staying until September 1844. Despite Morris' promise to either send for Mercy and their children, or return to her in Bridgeport if he found the Church of Latter Day Saints to be unscriptural, Morris with Jemima and Daniel did neither, joining the migration of Mormon pioneers to Utah Territory after the assassination of Joseph Smith on June 27, 1844. Morris later married at least four more wives; became a Mormon missionary and sailed the Pacific Ocean; joined the Mormon Battalion and wrote a hymn for it; and had his first wife, Frances "Fanny" Hall, baptized by proxy so that they could be together in the resurrection. Other Mormons also performed temple rites for Mercy and her children, including Crosby.

Personal

Crosby was a diminuitive woman, being 4 feet 9 inches (142.5 cm) tall, and weighed about 100 pounds (45 kg) in 1843.

Career

Congressional lobbyist (1843-1846)

After graduation from the New York Institution for the Blind in 1843, Crosby joined a group of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. arguing for support of education for the blind. Crosby was the first woman to speak in the United States Senate when she read a poem there. When Crosby appeared before a joint sitting of both houses of the United States Congress, she recited these lines:

O ye, who here from every state convene,

Illustrious band! may we not hope the scene

You now behold will prove to every mind

Instruction hath a ray to cheer the blind.

On January 24, 1844, Crosby was one of seventeen students from the New York Blind Institution who gave a concert for the Congress in the US Capitol, and she recited a thirteen stanza original composition that called for the creation of an institution for the education of the blind in every state, which "drew calls for an encore", and earned the congratulations of John Quincy Adams. On January 29, 1844 Crosby and nineteen other Blind Institution students gave a presentation to Daniel Haines, the governor; and the council and New Jersey General Assembly at Trenton, New Jersey, where she recited a twelve-stanza original poem calling for the aid and education of the blind. When President James K. Polk visited the Blind Institution in 1845, Crosby recited a poem she composed for the occasion that praised "republican government".

In April 1846, Crosby travelled to Washington, D.C. and again spoke before a joint session of the United States Congress, with delegations from the Boston and Philadelphia Insitutions for the Blind, "to advocate support for the education of the blind in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York", she spoke to the Congress on April 30, testified before a special congressional subcommittee, and sang a song she composed in the music room at the White House for Polk and his wife. Among the songs she sang as she accompanied herself on the piano was her own composition:

Our President! We humbly turn to thee -

Are not the blind the objects of thy care?

New York Institution for the Blind (1846-1858)

In 1846 Crosby was an instructor of the younger children at the New York Institution for the Blind, and was listed as a "graduate pupil". In September 1847 Crosby joined the faculty at the New York Institution for the Blind, teaching English grammar, rhetoric, and Greek history, Roman history, and American history, where she remained until three days before her wedding on March 5, 1858. By 1848 there were 60 pupils enrolled at the Blind Institution.

While teaching at the Blind Institution, Crosby studied music under George F. Root, until his resignation in November 1850, and met and befriended Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, William H. Seward, and General Winfield Scott. Another visitor that Crosby met was Jenny Lind in 1850. In 1851 Crosby addressed the New York state legislature.

While teaching at the Blind Institution Crosby befriended future US president Grover Cleveland, then aged 17, who was dean of students; an assistant teacher of writing, reading, and arithmetic; and was a bookkeeper and secretary to the administrator of the Institution from 1853 to 1854. Cleveland and Crosby spent many hours together at the end of each day, and Cleveland often transcibed the poems Crosby dictated to him. Cleveland wrote a recommendation for Crosby which was published in her 1906 autobiography. Being unable to attend due to her health, Crosby wrote a poem that was read at the dedication of Cleveland's birthplace in Caldwell, New Jersey in March 1913.

Spiritual

18th St Methodist Church

Crosby, who considered herself a "primitive Presbyterian", and the other students of the Blind Institution were required to attend daily morning and evening prayers, as well as Sunday morning and evening services held there and conducted by visiting clergymen of a variety of denominations, including Dutch Reformed, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodists. By 1850 Crosby usually attended church services and class meetings, at the Eighteenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church (established in 1835) at 305-307 West 18th Street, in what is now the Chelsea district of New York City.

Later Crosby's understanding of the Christian faith could be described as "rooted in Puritanism, developed by Methodism, warmed by the Holiness movement, and nourished by her Congregationalism".

Cholera Epidemic (1849)

From May to November 1849, during a cholera epidemic in New York City, where 5,071 New Yorkers died, "ordinary residents continued to hold that the disease represented retribution for sin", with most New Yorkers believing "that poverty was likewise a moral failing, and that the vices that produced disease also produced poverty". While ten Institution students died of cholera in 1849, Crosby chose to remain at the Blind Institution to nurse the sick, rather than retreat to the safety of the countryside. As a consequence, "Crosby seemed worn, languid, even depressed" when the Institution re-opened in November, forcing her to teach a lighter load. From that point her compositions began to reflect a more religious tone. In retrospect, Crosby, who had great ambitions and "lived in hopes of making a name for herself in the world, of making money", believed that at this time "she had denied the faith in which she had been reared and allowed it to take second place in her life to literary and social concerns". According to Bernard Ruffin:

In this atmosphere of death and gloom, Fanny became increasingly introspective over her soul’s welfare. She began to realize that something was lacking in her spiritual life. She knew that she had gotten wrapped up in social, political, and educational reform, and did not have a true love for God in her heart. She had attended Methodist church meetings twice a week for several years, and although she helped with the music, she did so on the condition that she would not be called upon to testify.

1850 revival

In November 1850, Crosby was invited by her friend Theodore D. Camp, who had been an industrial science teacher at the Institution since 1845, and was a member of the Eighteenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, to attend the annual Fall series of revival meetings at the newly constructed Thirtieth Street Methodist Episcopal Church (later renamed the Chelsea Methodist Episcopal Church) located four blocks from the Blind Institution at 331 West 30th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan, pastored by Rev. J.B. Beach. Despite attending each evening service during the fall campaign, and after two previous unsuccessful attempts to pray through to spiritual victory during those meetings, on November 20, 1850, Crosby left her pew again and knelt at the "anxious seat" at the front of the church sanctuary, and sought an assurance of her salvation. While the congregation sang the words of the fifth stanza:

Here Lord, I give myself away;

Tis all that I can do.

Crosby later testified: "My very soul was flooded with celestial light. I sprang to my feet, shouting 'Hallelujah'". Crosby recalled "the Lord planted a star in my life and no cloud has ever obscured its light".

As a consequence this "November Experience", which was "a watershed of sorts in her life", which some (including her friend Camp) regarded as her conversion, Crosby "felt roused from a comparative state of indifference". After this deepening of her spiritual life, "the beginning of the total dedication of her life to God", Crosby began attending the class meeting each Thursday at the Blind Institution, led by Stephen Merritt, Jr. (born March 6, 1833; died January 30, 1917), who would later become a Methodist minister and evangelist; philanthropist, who established a mission at 208 Eighth Avenue, where he daily fed up to 2,000 needy people; president of a successful undertaking business; secretary to Bishop William Taylor; "the temperance apostle"; and one of the leaders of the Holiness movement in New York Methodism. Within weeks Crosby testified and prayed publicly in the class meeting. However, Crosby acknowledged that there "was no sudden or dramatic change in her way of life", writing: "My growth in grace was very slow, from the beginning".

Church affiliation

Crosby did not become a member of any church until Spring 1887, choosing rather to attend a variety of churches of various denominations, including the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights, New York pastored by Henry Ward Beecher, whose powerful oratory, moderate theology, use of "invigorated communal song", and operation of missions in Brooklyn and Manhattan for the disadvantaged, and his "blend of Union patriotism and Christianity" during the American Civil War, appealed to Crosby; the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church (later Broadway Presbyterian Church), pastored from 1863 to 1891 by her distant cousin Dr. Howard Crosby, the chancellor of New York University from 1870, who started three city missions. often attended vespers at an Episcopal church; worshiped at the Northwest Dutch Reformed church at 145 West 23rd Street where Peter Stryker preached; and attended the Broadway Tabernacle to hear DeWitt Talmadge and enjoy the "excellent music and congregational song".

While tradition insists Crosby was a member "in good standing" of the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City, there are no contemporaneous records to confirm this. By 1869 Crosby attended the Chelsea Methodist Episcopal Church at 331 West 30th Street (between Eighth and Ninth Avenues), New York City.

Holiness movement

While not identified publicly with the American holiness movement of the second half of the nineteenth century, and despite having left no record of an experience of entire sanctification, Crosby was a fellow traveler of the Wesleyan holiness movement, including in her circle of friends prominent members of the American Holiness movement and she attended Wesleyan/Holiness camp meetings. For example, Crosby was a friend of Walter and Phoebe Palmer, "the mother of the holiness movement", and "arguably the most influential female theologian in Christian history", and their daughter Phoebe Knapp, with whom she wrote "Blessed Assurance", often visiting the Methodist camp grounds at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, as their guest. For many years (from at least 1877 until at least 1897), Crosby vacationed each Summer at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, where she would speak in the Great Auditorium and hold receptions in her cottage to meet her admirers.

In 1877 Crosby met William J. Kirkpatrick, one of the most prolific composers of gospel song tunes, and "the most prominent publisher in the Wesleyan/Holiness Movement", whom she called "Kirkie", with whom she wrote many hymns, at the Holiness camp meeting in Ocean Grove. Some of her hymns reflected her Wesleyan beliefs, including her call to consecrated Christian living in "I Am Thine, O Lord" (1875):

Cornell Methodist Episcopal Church (1906)

Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord,

By the power of grace divine.

Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,

And my will be lost in Thine.

In Spring 1887 Crosby joined by "confession of faith" the Cornell Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, which was located at 231 East 76th Street (between Second and Third Avenues) in Manhattan, near her home on Fourth Avenue, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The church had been named in honor of William W. Cornell (died 1870), a Methodist ironfounder, and dedicated on March 25, 1883.

Early writing career

Poetry

Crosby began writing poetry from the time she was eight years old, and her earliest published poem was on the theme of a dishonest miller near Ridgefield, Connecticut, which was sent without her knowledge to P.T. Barnum, who published it in his The Herald of Freedom of Danbury, Connecticut.

After some temporary opposition by the faculty of the Blind Institution, Crosby's inclination to versify was encouraged after she was examined by George Combe, a visiting Scottish phrenologist, who pronounced her a "born poetess". The Institution found Hamilton Murray, who admitted his own inability to compose poetry, to teach her poetic composition. Murray requiring Crosby to memorize long passages of poetry, and to study and copy the style of the great poets, and taught her poetic rhythm, form, and symmetry.

In 1841 New York Herald published Crosby's eulogistic poem on the death of President William Henry Harrison, thus beginning her literary career. The first stanza is:

He is gone: in death's cold arms he sleeps.

Our President, our hero brave,

While fair Columbia o'er him weeps,

And chants a requiem at his grave;

Her sanguine hopes are blighted now,

And weeds of sorrow veil her brow.

Crosby's poems were published frequently in The Saturday Evening Post, the Clinton Signal, and the Fireman's Journal.

File:A Blind Girl.jpg

Frontispiece of The Blind Girl (1844)

Despite a serious illness that resulted in her leaving the Blind Institution to recuperate, Crosby's first published book was A Blind Girl and Other Poems, published after encouragement by the Blind Institution in April 1844 by Putnam & Wiley, contained 78 of her original poems and addresses, including what Crosby describes as her first published hymn, "An Evening Hymn", based on Psalm 4:8.

While Crosby was reluctant to have her poems published, she acquiesced eventually as it would both publicise the Institution and raise funds for it:

It was with great reluctance that I consented to have my poems published; for I realized only too well that they were unfinished productions; and I hoped to im­prove upon them in time. But a few of the teachers and managers at the Institution would not take no for an answer; and, consequently, the work went forward. Mr. Hamilton Murray wrote the introduction and Dr. J. W. G. Clements did the compiling, which was all the more kind of him since he had a large practice and could spare but a moment now and then to listen to my dictation.

In 1853 Crosby's Monterey and Other Poems, containing 101 poems and addresses was published by R. Craighead of 112 Fulton Street, New York City, because of her "sadly impaired health, and a frequent inability to discharge those duties from which I hitherto derived a maintenance", and the hope that "the Blind Girl's declining years be thereby rendered unclouded by that dependency so repulsive", and who was "ever assiduous for her self-support". In her 1903 autobiography edited by Will Carleton, Crosby indicates that at this time: "I was under a feeling of sadness and depression at this time". It included poems focusing on the recent Mexican-American War, and a poem pleading for the USA to help those affected by the Irish Potato Famine.

About the time Crosby resigned from the Blind Institution and was married, in 1858, her third book, A Wreath of Columbia's Flowers, containing four short stories and 30 poems was published by H. Dayton of Nassau Street, New York City.

Popular songs

Inspired by the success of the melodies of Stephen Foster, between August 1851 and 1855 Crosby wrote at least sixty popular secular songs, many for the popular minstrel shows, which were set to music by George F. Root, who had taught music at the Blind Institution from 1845 to 1850. Due to the negative reputation of the minstrel shows among some Christians, Crosby's participation in these compositions was deliberately obscured at her request. For many years Crosby was usually paid only $1 or $2 per poem with all rights to the song being retained by the composer or publisher of the music.

Crosby and Root's first song was "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear" (1851), which Crosby described as "the grief of a colored man on the death of his beloved", and was written for and performed exclusively by Henry Wood's Minstrels. During her vacations in 1852 and 1853 at North Reading, Massachusetts, Crosby wrote the lyrics for many of her collaborations with Root. Among their joint compositions were: "Bird of the North" (1852); and "Mother, Sweet Mother, Why Linger Away?" (1852). After the success of Crosby and Root's "The Hazel Dell" (1852), a hit, on "the fringes of blackface minstrelsy, although it lacks dialect or any hint of buffoonery", that was "one of the most popular songs in the country", about a beautiful girl who died young, Root signed a three-year contract with William Hall & Son, who published such Root-Crosby compositions as "The Greenwood Bell" (1853); and "They Have Sold Me Down the River (The Negro Father's Lament)" (1853); Their song "There's Music in the Air" (1854) became a "hit song", and was listed in Variety Music Cavalcade as one of the most popular songs of 1854, and was in songbooks until at least the 1930s.

After the expiration of Root's contract with William Hall & Son in 1855, other joint Crosby-Root songs were published by other publishers, including Six Songs by Wurtzel published in 1855 by S. Brainard's Sons of Cleveland, Ohio, after being rejected by Nathan Richardson of Russell & Richardson of Boston, Massachusetts. These six Root-Crosby songs were "O How Glad to Get Home"; "Honeysuckle Glen"; "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower", about the death of a young girl, popularized in the 1850s by the Christy Minstrels, sold more than 125,000 copies of sheet music that earned nearly $3,000 in royalties for Root, and almost nothing for Crosby, after they failed to sell it originally for $100 to Richardson; "The Church in the Wood"; "All Together Now"; and "Proud World, Good-by".

Cantatas

After 1852 Crosby wrote three cantatas with George F. Root: The Flower Queen; The Coronation of the Rose (1852), "the first secular cantata written by an American", an opera "in all but name", which "illustrated nineteenth-century American romanticism", and was performed more than 500 times in the first four years after its publication. In her 1906 autobiography Crosby explained the theme of this cantata:

the story of which is as follows: an old man becoming tired of the world, decides to become a hermit; but, as he is about to retire to his lonely hut, he hears a chorus singing, "Who shall be queen of the flowers?" His interest is at once aroused; and on the following day he is asked to act as judge in a contest where each flower urges her claims to be queen of all the others. At length the hermit chooses the rose for her loveliness; and in turn she exhorts him to return to the world and to his duty.

The second Root-Crosby cantata was Daniel, or the Captivity and Restoration, based on the Old Testament story of Daniel, that was composed in 1853 for Root's choir at the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. This cantata comprised 35 songs, with music composed with William Batchelder Bradbury, and words by Union Theological Seminary student Chauncey Marvin Cady and Crosby;

In 1854 Root and Crosby collaboarated to compose The Pilgrim Fathers (1854), with Lowell Mason assisting Root with the music.

In 1870 a new version of the The Flower Queen was released as The New Flower Queen; The Coronation of the Rose, with Henry Fisher adding lyrics. Crosby wrote the libretto for a cantata entitled, The Excursion, with Baptist music professor Theodore Edson Perkins (born Poughkeepsie, New York on July 21, 1831; died 1912), one of the founders of New York music publishing house Brown & Perkins, writing the music. In 1886 Crosby and William Howard Doane wrote Santa Claus' Home; or, The Christmas Excursion, a Christmas cantata, published by Biglow & Main.

Political songs

In addition to poems of welcome to visiting dignataries, Crosby wrote songs of a political nature, writing songs about the major battles of the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War. By the 1840 US Presidential election, Crosby was "an ardent Democrat" and wrote verse against the Whig candidate (and ultimate winner), William Henry Harrison. By 1852 Crosby switched her political allegiance from support for the Jacksonian Democrats to the anti-slavery Whigs, writing the poem "Carry Me On" for the Whigs in 1852. After the election of Democrat Franklin Pierce as US President in November 1856, she wrote:

The election's past and I'm pierced at last

The locos have gained the day.

A "strict abolitionist", Crosby suppported Abraham Lincoln and the newly-created Republican Party. After the Civil War, Crosby was a devoted supporter of the Grand Army of the Republic and its political aims.

Patriotic songs

Songsheet for "A Sound Among the Forest Trees" (1864)

According to one source, Crosby "was so patriotic that when the Civil War broke out, she often pinned the Union flag to her blouse. When a southern lady found this offensive and snapped, 'Take that dirty rag away from here!' Fanny was incensed and told the woman to 'Repeat that remark at your risk!' The restaurant manager arrived on the scene just in time to prevent the two women from coming to blows".

During the American Civil War, Crosby "vented patriotism in verse", and it "evoked from Crosby an outpouring of songs -- some haunting, some mournful, some militaristic, a few even gory", but "her texts testified to her clear moral sense about the issues that fomented in the war years". Crosby wrote many poems supporting the Union cause, including "Dixie for the Union" (1861), a poem written before the outbreak of hostilities to the tune of Dixie, a tune adopted later by the Confederate States of America as a patriotic anthem. The first of the five stanzas is:

On! ye Patriots, to the battle

Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle:

Then away, then away, then away to the fight!

Go, meet those Southern traitors, with iron will,

And should your courage falter, Boys,

Remember Bunker Hill - Hurrah.

Chorus: Hurrah - Hurrah, The Stars and Stripes forever

Hurrah - Hurrah, Our Union shall not sever.

Soon after they met in February 1864, Crosby wrote the words and William B. Bradbury composed the music for a popular patriotic Civil War song "There is a Sound Among the Forest Trees". Crosby's text encourages volunteers to join the Union forces and incorporates references to the past of the USA including the Pilgrim Fathers and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Also during the American Civil War, Crosby wrote "Song to Jeff Davis", directed at Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, which expressed her belief in the morality of the Union cause: "Our stars and stripes are waving, And Heav'n will speed our cause". Crosby also wrote "Good-By, Old Arm", a tribute to wounded soldiers with music by Philip Philips; "Our Country"; and "A Tribute (to the memory of our dead heroes)".

As late as September 1908, Crosby wrote patriotic poems for the Daughters of the American Revolution, including "The State We Honor", that extolled the virtues of her adopted state of Connecticut.

Marriage and family

In the summer of 1843 Crosby met her future husband, Alexander Van Alstyne (sometimes Van Alstine) (born in 1831 in Cayuga, New York), the son of Mary Dowd (born in Ireland; died June 1880) and Alexander "Wells" van Alstine (died 1831 in New York), an engineeer "from the banks of the Rhine", who had migrated to Ontario, Canada by 1825 with his wife while still a young man, and later had a prominent role in the construction of the Welland Canal. After his father's death, Mary van Alstine and her sons moved to Oswego, New York. In the summer of 1843 Mary van Alstine convinced Crosby to recommend the sight-impaired Alexander, who was legally blind, to be enrolled at the NYIB, and to take him under her personal charge, while he studied there from 1845. During his four years at NYIB, Van Alstyne was a casual acquaintance of Crosby and sometimes a student in her classes. In 1848 Van Alstyne became the first NYIB graduate to attend a "regular college", when he enrolled Union College in Schenectady, New York, where he studied music, Greek, Latin, philosophy, and theology, and earned a teaching certificate.

After leaving Union College in 1852, Van Alstyne became a music instructor in the public schools of Albion, New York until 1855. Additionally Van was a composer, and performer, and was proficient on the piano and the cornet, and was the organist at a church in New York city. From 1855 Van Alstyne was a teacher at NYIB for two years. During this time Crosby and Van Alstyne, whom his friends called "Van", were engaged to be married, necessitating her resignation from NYIB three days prior to their wedding at Maspeth, New York on March 5, 1858.

In later years Crosby recounted the beginnings of her relationship with Alexander Van Alstyne:

"Now for my little love story. Some people seem to forget that blind girls have just as great a faculty for loving and do love just as much and just as truly as those who have their sight. I had a heart that was hungry for love. When I was about twenty a gifted young man by the name of Alexander Van Alstyne came to our Institution. He also was blind, and a most talented student. He was fond of classic literature and theological lore, but made music a specialty. After hearing several of my poems he became deeply interested in my work; and I after listening to his sweet strains of music became interested in him. Thus we soon grew to be very much concerned for each other. One day in June he went out under the elm trees to listen to the birds sing, and the winds play their love-song among the leaves. It was here the voice of love spoke within his breast. Listening, he heard its voice of music trilling its notes to his heart. Just then another to whom the voice was calling came towards the spot where he was musing. I placed my right hand on his left and called him 'Van.' Then I was that two happy lovers sat in silence while the sunbeams danced around their heads, and the golden curtains of day drew in their light. 'Van' took up the harp of love, and drawing his fingers over the golden chords, sang to me the song of a true lover's heart. From that hour two lives looked on a new universe, for love met love, and all the world was changed. We were no longer blind, for the light of love showed us where the lilies bloomed, and where the crystal waters find the moss-mantled spring. On March the fifth in the year 1858 we were united in marriage.

Maspeth, New York (1858-1859)

Fanny Crosby and Alexander Van Alstyne

After their wedding, the Van Alstynes lived in a small home in the small rural village of Maspeth, New York, then with a population of about 200 people. At Van's insistence, Crosby continued to use her maiden name as her literary name for her compositions, but she chose to use her married name on all legal documents. However, according to Crosby biographer Edith Blumhofer: "Despite her education, her handwriting was barely legible, and on legal documents she signed her name with an X witnessed by friends".

In 1859 the Van Alstynes had one daughter, Frances, who died in her sleep soon after birth. Crosby revealed late in life: While some believe the cause was typhoid fever, Darlene Neptune speculates that it was SIDS, and that Crosby's hymn, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" was inspired by her daughter's death.

After the death of their daughter, Van became increasingly reclusive, and Crosby never spoke publicly about being a mother, only mentioning it in a few interviews toward the end of her life, when she said: "Now I am going to tell you of something that only my closest friends know. I became a mother and knew a mother's love. God gave us a tender babe but the angels came down and took our infant up to God and to His throne".

Manhattan (1859-1896)

Fanny Crosby (1872)

After the death of their daughter, later in 1859 the Van Alstynes lived for a few months in a small brick home on Spruce Street, Manhattan, adjoining St. John's Park near the eastern entrance to today's Holland Tunnel. By 1860 they had moved to a private home near the Blind Institution owned by a sighted proprietor who rented rooms to blind tenants, The Van Alstynes moved frequently, "establishing a pattern that continued for the rest of their lives", and never owned their own home, living in rented accommodation without a lease. They lived at 416 Ninth Avenue, and then farther south in the old part of the city where they "lived in a small, cramped apartment in Manhattan's Lower East Side", which was a few blocks from the notorious Bowery, one of Manhattan's worst slums, and a well-known "haunt for hopeless alcoholics and the main artery of a thriving red light district and pornographic center".

In addition to Crosby's income as a poet and lyricist, Van played the organ at two churches in New York city, and gave private music lessons. Although Crosby and Van could have lived comfortably on their combined income, Crosby "had other priorities and gave away anything that was not necessary to their daily survival". Crosby and Van also organized concerts, with half the proceeds given to aid the poor, in which Crosby gave recitations of her poems and sang and Van Alstyne played various instruments. While Van Alstyne provided the music for some of her poetry, Crosby indicated that "his taste was mostly for the wordless melodies of the classics".

In the 1870s the Van Alstynes continued their peripatetic pattern of housing, living in homes on Varick Street in the lower westside of Manhattan: initially in a two-story frame dwelling on the east side of Varick Street (between Grand and Watts Streets), and later in a two-story brick residence "three doors down". In 1874 Crosby was reported to be "living in a destitute condition".

Separation (1880-1902)

For many years the Van Alstynes had had "a most unusual married life", as "through her most active years she lived only intermittently with her husband". By 1880 Crosby and her husband, Alexander Van Alstyne, had separated, with them living both separately and independently due to a rift in their marriage of uncertain origin. In June 1880 Crosby was listed in the 1880 United States Census as a single poetess boarding with Elizabeth Norris, a dressmaker, and her four children, at 141 Forsyth Street (near Delancey Street and Bowery), New York City, with Van living elsewhere. Blumhofer suggests their estrangement was due to Van denying Crosby the romantic love she desired due to the effect of the death of their daughter in 1859, and because their housing choices offered them little privacy. Others suggest the separation was the result of in the increase of Crosby's outside interests, including writing hymns and rescue work. According to Blumhofer, Crosby seemed to seek reconcilation with Van Alstyne in a poem:

O come, if thou art true to me,

If yet thou lov'st me well

And meet me at our trysting place

Within the mossy dell;

Yes, meet me as when first we met

Beneath a summer sky

Long, long before our lips had learned

That cruel word, good-bye

In the second stanza of that same poem, Crosby seemed to blame herself: ...

Perhaps the fault is mine;

I know my looks were cold and stern,

A frown was on my brow;

But I regret that fatal hour;

Will thou forgive me now?

In the final stanza Crosby indicated: ...

Yet not one shadow would I cast

Around thy peerless name;

Mine, mine the wrong; I'll bear it now

And I deserve the blame.

In the third stanza of another poem written the day she heard that Van Alstyne had died, she indicated that despite God not answering her prayers for a loving relationship with her husband, that she was still determined to be satisfied:

And tho' at times the things I ask

In love are oft denied

I know he gives me what is best

And I am satisfied.

Van Alstyne rarely accompanied Crosby when she travelled, and she vacationed without him. Despite living separately for more than two decades, Crosby insisted that they "maintained an amiable relationship", kept in contact with one another, and even ministered together on occasions in this period. For example, on June 15, 1895 in Yonkers, New York, Van Alstyne played a piano solo, and Crosby read an ode to Captain John Underhill, the progenitor of the American branch of the Underhill family, at the third annual reunion of the Underhill Society of America. Crosby's only recorded admission of marital unhappiness was in 1903, when she commented on her late husband in Will Carleton's This is My Story: "He had his faults - and so have I mine, but notwithstanding these, we loved each other to the last".

During the 1880s, Crosby moved from lower Manhattan to the upper East Side, initially to an apartment on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 114th Street. During the 1890s, Crosby moved several times more to various addresses on Park Avenue between Eighty-eighth and Ninety-first streets.

Brooklyn (1896-1900)

By 1888 Professor Van Alstyne was working as a musician and living at 154 Rockaway Avenue, Brooklyn.

In 1896 Crosby moved from Manhattan to an apartment in a poor section of Brooklyn, living with friends at South Third Street, Brooklyn, near the home of Ira D. Sankey and his wife, Fannie, and near the mansion owned by Phoebe Knapp.

Career in writing hymns (1864-1915)

"A Hymn of Thanksgiving" sheet music cover
November 26, 1899

Crosby was "the most prolific of all nineteenth-century American sacred song writers". By the end of her career Crosby had written almost 9,000 hymns, using scores of noms de plume assigned to her by publishers who wanted to disguise the proliferation of her compositions in their publications. Crosby produced an estimated one-third to one-half of the songs published by her publishers. It is estimated that books containing her lyrics sold 100 million copies. However, due to the low regard for lyricists in the popular song industry during her lifetime, and what June Hadden Hobbs sees as "the hypocrisy of sacred music publishers" which resulted for Crosby in "a sad and probably representative tale of exploitation of female hymn writers". According to David Ward Stowe: "Like many of the lyricists of the day, Crosby was exploited by copyright conventions that assigned rights not to the lyricist but to the composer of the music; ... Crosby was paid a flat fee of one or two dollars a hymn". In her 1906 autobiography, Crosby insisted that she wrote her hymns "in a sanctified manner", and never for financial or commercial considerations, and that she had donated her royalties to "worthy causes". Crosby set a goal of winning a million people to Christ through her hymns, and whenever she wrote a hymn she prayed it would bring women and men to Christ, and kept careful records of those reported to have been saved through her hymns.

Referring to Crosby's songs, the Dictionary of American Religious Biography indicated: "by modern standards her work may be considered mawkish or too sentimental. But their simple, homey appeal struck a responsive chord in Victorian culture. Their informal ballad style broke away from the staid, formal approach of earlier periods, touching deep emotions in singers and listeners alike. Instead of dismissing her words as maudlin or saccharine, audiences thrilled to them as the essence of genuine, heartfelt Christianity". Crosby's hymns were popular because they placed "a heightened emphasis on religious experiences, emotions, and testimonies" and relected "a sentimental, romanticized relationship between the believer and Christ", rather than using the negative descriptions of earlier hymns that emphasised the sinfulness of people.

Ann Douglas argues that Crosby was one of the female authors who "emasculated American religion" and helped shift it from "a rigorous Calvinism" to "an anti-intellectual and sentimental mass culture". Feminist scholars have suggested that "emphases in her hymns both revealed and accelerated the feminizing of American evangelicalism".

William B. Bradbury (1864-1868)

Desiring to see her religious poems published in Sunday School hymn books, on February 2, 1864, Crosby was introduced to composer William B. Bradbury, a respected musician and publisher, and "the father of popular Sunday-school music in America", in the offices of his publishing company at 425 Broome Street, Manhattan. by Peter Stryker, the pastor of the Dutch Reformed church on 23rd Street in Manhattan. Three days later, Crosby met Bradfield at the Ponton Hotel on Franklin Street, New York City, and submitted her first Sunday School hymn, "We are Going (Our Bright Home Above)", a few weeks before her 44th birthday. Bradbury, who had been unhappy with the quality of many of the hymns that were submitted to him for publication, was so impressed by Crosby's submission, that he published it in his Golden Censer (1864), a book of Sunday School hymns that sold three million copies. Bradbury hired Crosby to write hymns and secular songs for his company, telling her, "While I have a publishing house, you will always have work!".

In 1865 Crosby provided religious words to their popular patriotic Civil War song "There is a Sound Among the Forest Trees", that had been written early in 1864, which became the hymn "There's a Cry from Macedonia".

Biglow and Main (1868-1915)

After Bradbury's death of consumption in January 1868, his company was purchased by The Biglow and Main Co. of New York City, which was owned by Lucius Horatio Biglow (born 1833; died 1910), a lawyer, poet, and music publisher; Sylvester Main; and Main's son, Hubert Pratt Main. For several years Crosby was under contract to write three hymns a week for Biglow and Main. However, at one time Crosby was the only writer employed by Biglow and Main, and they assigned various pseudonyms to Crosby's compositions to disguise the situation. By 1889, it was estimated that Crosby had written over 2,500 hymns for Bradbury, and Biglow and Main. In total, Biglow and Main purchased 5,900 poems from her for use in the Sunday School publications, and published nearly 2,000 of them, and provided her a regular allowance in her later years until her death.

While Crosby remained associated with Biglow and Main for the rest of her life, she was also free to write for other companies, writing thousands of hymns for other composers, including Ira D. Sankey; Philip Phillips; William Howard Doane; Phoebe Palmer Knapp; William J. Kirkpatrick; George C. Stebbins; Robert Lowry; Philip P. Bliss; Hart Pease Danks, author of "Silver Threads Among the Gold", which sold three million copies; Hubert P. Main, co-founder of Crosby's publisher Biglow & Main; John R. Sweney; Silas Jones Vail; William Fiske Sherwin; and Rev. Samuel Alman.

Philip Phillips (from 1866)

Crosby wrote many lyrics for Methodist song publisher Philip Phillips (born August 13, 1834, Chautauqua County, New York; died June 25, 1895, Delaware, Ohio), the premier American song evangelist, including a cycle of forty poems based on John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which was published in Phillips' 1866 hymnal The Singing Pilgrim.

William Howard Doane (from 1867)

American Baptist industrialist William Howard Doane (born February 3, 1932; died December 24, 1915), better known as Howard Doane, and to Crosby simply as Doane, composed melodies for more than one thousand of Crosby's lyrics, including "More Like Jesus" (1867), "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour" (1868), "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" (1868), "Rescue the Perishing" (1869), "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" (1869), "To God Be the Glory" (1875), "Savior, More Than Life to Me" (1875), and "I Am Thine, O Lord" (1875). Doane had a financial interest in John Church and Company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second largest publisher of sacred music after Biglow and Main".

The words of "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" were composed by Crosby on April 20, 1868, in just twenty minutes to a tune supplied to her by Doane. Doane sang the song that evening in a Sunday School Convention at the St. Denis Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Doane copyrighted both text and tune together as a single unit and refused permission for the words to be used to any other tune, ensuring increased royalties for himself.

"Safe in the Arms of Jesus" considered by her generation as Crosby's most popular song, was sung at the funerals of President James A. Garfield in September 1881, and of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885. Bishop James Hannington sang this song as he was led away to be martyred in Uganda in 1885. In February 1882 the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang this hymn in a concert at the White House for President Chester A. Arthur, which brought him to tears, prompting Arthur to apologize for his impulsive display of feelings. In the 1890s, The New York Times reported "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" had been translated into more modern languages than any other hymn.

Ira D. Sankey

File:Sankey & Crosby.jpg

Ira D. Sankey and Fanny Crosby collaborating at Sankey's Brooklyn home

With the rise of urban revivalism in the 1870s, "as epitomized by the revival team of Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey - Crosby's Sunday school songs became the quintessential expressions of revivalism, with its emphasis on salvation from sin as provided by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross". While Crosby had become known through the Sunday School songs she wrote with William B. Bradbury, "Moody and Sankey took what Bradbury had started and multiplied it exponentially. The staying power of Crosby's texts -- and the hallowing of a Crosby legend -- was assured in the context of the Moody-Sankey revivals of the 1870s. Moody and Sankey accelerated a trend already under way and made Fanny Crosby (often as set to the music of Doane and Knapp) a household name to Protestants around the world". The evangelistic team of Sankey and Dwight L. Moody brought many of Crosby's hymns to the attention of Christians throughout the United States and Britain.

Crosby and song evangelist Ira D. Sankey, the 'sweet singer of Methodism', collaborated in the production of hundreds of Gospel songs, many which appear in hymnals and song books today. Crosby and Sankey frequently corresponded: "Fanny would have an inspiration that would result in a new poem, which she would ask Sankey to set to music; or the 'singing evangelist' would have some new composition for which he would request the blind poet to supply a literary setting". After the death of Dwight Moody in 1899, Sankey spent the last years of his life as the president of Biglow and Main.

George C. Stebbins

In the summer of 1894 Crosby attended the annual Christian Workers' Conference at Northfield, Massachusetts organized by evangelist Dwight L. Moody. At an evening gathering in the summer home of Ira D. Sankey, after several had spoken of their Christian experience, Moody turned to Crosby, "Now we want a word from you." After an initial hesitation, Crosby quietly arose and said: "There is one hymn I have written which has never been published. I call it my Soul's poem, and sometimes when I am troubled I repeat it to myself, for it brings comfort to my heart." Crosby read "Some Day", a poem she wrote in 1891 and submitted to Biglow and Main, who paid her $2, but did not publish. In 1891 Crosby attended a prayer meeting led by Dr Howard Crosby, who preached on the subject of grace based on Psalm 23. A week later Dr. Crosby died suddenly. According to Crosby: "The hymn was called into being through…a ser­mon preached by Dr. How­ard Cros­by who was a dis­tant rel­a­tive and dear friend of mine. He said that no Christ­ian should fear death, for if each of us was faith­ful to the grace giv­en us by Christ, the same grace that teach­es us how to live would al­so teach us how to die. His re­marks were af­ter­ward pub­lished in a news­pa­per, and they were read to me by Mr. Big­low. Not ma­ny hours af­ter I heard them I be­gan to write the hymn". Crosby wrote the four stanzas and chorus of "Saved By Grace" in less than an hour.

After Moody's encouragement, Crosby recited the lines:

Some day the silver cord will break,

And I no more as now shall sing:

But, O the joy when I awake

Within the palace of the King!

And I shall see him face to face,

And tell the story — Saved by Grace.

Those who were present and saw Crosby, "her uplifted face with those sightless orbs marked by a strange wistfulness, will never forget the pathetic emphasis of the refrain: 'And I shall see him face to face'". Crosby was reluctant to have this poem published, but a reporter, from The London Christian, took her poem with him to England and published it there. When Sankey found this out, he prevailed upon George Stebbins to compose some music for it, thus bringing "Saved by Grace" to the public, where it was popularized in the last years of the Moody-Sankey campaigns.

Crosby's process

"Spring Hymn"
Words & Music
by Fanny Crosby

"The Blood-Washed Throng"
(1906)

Crosby described her hymn-writing process: 'It may seem a little old-fashioned, always to begin one's work with prayer, but I never undertake a hymn without first asking the good Lord to be my inspiration.' Crosby's capacity for work was incredible and often she would compose six or seven hymns a day. Crosby composed her poems and hymns entirely in her mind and worked mentally on as many as twelve hymns at once before dictating them to an amenuensus. On one occasion Crosby composed 40 hymns before they were transcribed. Crosby's lyrics would usually be transcribed by Alexander Van Alstyne, or later by her half-sister Carolyn "Carrie" Ryder or her secretary Eva C. Cleaveland, as Crosby herself could write little more than her name. While Crosby had musical training, she did not compose the melody for most of her lyrics. In fact, in 1903 Crosby claimed that "Spring Hymn" was the only hymn she wrote both the words and music. In 1906 Crosby composed both the words and music for "The Blood-Washed Throng", which was published and copyrighted by gospel singer Mary Upham Currier, who was a distant cousin who had been a well-known concert singer.

In 1921 Edward S, Ninde wrote: "None would claim that she was a poetess in any large sense. Her hymns ... have been severely criticised. Dr. Julian, the editor of the Dictionary of Hymnology, says that 'they are, with few exceptions, very weak and poor,' and others insist that they are 'crudely sentimental.' Some hymn books will give them no place whatever". According to Glimpses of Christian History, Crosby's "hymns have sometimes been criticized as 'gushy and mawkishly sentimental' and critics have often attacked both her writing and her theology. The fact remains, however, that she has exerted an enormous influence on American hymnody, and some of her hymns are still cherished by believers today. Although thousands of her hymns have faded into obscurity over the years, they nevertheless were meaningful to her contemporaries, speaking to their lives and expressing their devotion to God. As fellow hymn writer George C. Stebbins stated, 'There was probably no writer in her day who appealed more to the valid experience of the Christian life or who expressed more sympathetically the deep longings of the human heart than Fanny Crosby.' And many of her hymns have stood the test of time, still resonating with believers today".

"Rescue the perishing"

Manuscript of Crosby's
"The Rescue Band" (1895)

While Crosby will probably always be best known for her hymns, she wanted to be seen primarily as a rescue mission worker. According to Keith Schwanz: "At the end of her life, Fanny’s concept of her vocation was not that of a celebrated gospel songwriter, but that of a city mission worker. In an interview that was published in the March 24, 1908, issue of the New Haven Register, Fanny said that her chief occupation was working in missions. Although, according to Schwanz: "Many of Fanny’s hymns emerged from her involvement in the city missions", including "More Like Jesus" (1867); "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour" (1868); and "Rescue the Perishing" (1869), which became the "theme song of the home missions movement", and was "perhaps the most popular city mission song", with its "wedding of personal piety and compassion for humanity". Crosby celebrated the rescue mission movement in her 1895 hymn, "The Rescue Band".

As Crosby had lived for decades in such areas of New York City as Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, The Bowery, and The Tenderloin, she was aware personally of the great needs of immigrants and the urban poor, and was passionate to help those around her through urban rescue missions and other compassionate ministry organizations. Crosby indicated "from the time I received my first check for my poems, I made up my mind to open my hand wide to those who needed assistance". After her marriage, Crosby "had other priorities and gave away anything that was not necessary to their daily survival". The Van Alstynes also organized concerts, with half the proceeds given to aid the poor. Throughout New York City, Crosby's sympathies for the poor were well-known, but consisted primarily of indirect involvement by giving contributions from the sale of her poems, and by writing and sending poems for special occasions for these missions to the dispossessed, as well as sporadic visits to those missions.

Rescue missions (1865-1880)

Among those Crosby supported was the American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless (founded in 1834) at 29 East 29th Street, for whom she wrote a hymn in 1865 that was sung by some of the Home's children:

O, no, we are not friendless now,

For God hath reared a home.

"More Like Jesus Would I Be", her first hymn written for W. Howard Doane in June 1867, expressly for the sixth anniversary of the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, a nondenominational mission founded at 40 New Bowery, Manhattan on June 10, 1861 by Rev. W.C. van Meter, to do "all the good we can to the souls and bodies of all whom we can reach".

After speaking at a prison service in 1868, Crosby was inspired to write "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour" after comments by some prisoners for the Lord not to pass them by, with Doane setting it to music and publishing it in Songs of De­vo­tion in 1870. "Pass Me Not" became her first hymn to have global appeal, after it was used by Ira Sankey in is crusades with Dwight L. Moody in Britain in 1874. Sankey said, "No hymn was more popular at the meetings in London in 1875 [sic] than this one.

In April 1868 Crosby wrote "Fifty Years Ago" for the semi-centennial of the New-York Port Society, which was founded in 1818 "for the promotion of the Gospel among the seamen in the Port of New-York".

By July 1869 Crosby was attending at least weekly meetings organized by the interdenominational New York City Mission, which had been founded by the New York City Mission and Tract Society in 1852, and had been reorganized under the chairmanship of Howard Crosby and presidency of DeWitt Talmadge in 1866. After a young man was converted through her testimony, Crosby was inspired to write the words for "Rescue the Perishing" based on a title, a text (Luke 14:23), and a tune given to her by William Howard Doane a few days earlier. In his 1907 book My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns, Ira Sankey recalled the origins of "Rescue the Perishing":

Fanny Crosby returned, one day, from a visit to a mission in one of the worst districts in New York City, where she had heard about the needs of the lost and perishing. Her sympathies were aroused to help the lowly and neglected, and the cry of her heart went forth in this hymn, which has become a battle-cry for the great army of Christian workers throughout the world. It is been used very extensively in temperance work, and has been blessed to thousands of souls.

Rescue missions (1880-1900)

In 1880, at the age of sixty, Crosby "made a new commitment to Christ to serve the poor", and to devote the rest of her life to home missionary work. From this time Crosby increased her involvement in various missions and homes. During the next three decades, Crosby would dedicate her time as "Aunty Fanny" to work at various city rescue missions, including the McAuley Water Street Mission, the Bowery Mission, the Howard Mission, the Cremore Mission, the Door of Hope, and other skid row missions. Additionally, Crosby spoke at YMCAs, churches, and prisons about the needs of the urban poor. Additionally, Crosby was a passionate supporter of Frances Willard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union and its endeavors to urge either abstinence or moderation in the use of alcohol. For example, before 1879 Crosby wrote the words for the song "The Red Pledge", which advocated total abstinence from imbibing alcohol.

Water Street Mission (1880)

316 Water Street Mission

From about 1880, Crosby attended and supported the Helping Hand for Men (better known as the Water Street Mission), "America's first rescue mission", at 316 Water Street, Manhattan, which was founded on October 8, 1872, to minister to alcoholics and the unemployed by a former prostitute, Maria and Jeremiah "Jerry" McAuley, a former alcoholic, thief, and convict who had become a Christian in Sing Sing prison in 1864. Crosby often attended the Water Street Mission, "conversing and counseling with those she met".

Bowery Mission (1881)

Bowery Mission

For two decades From November 1881, Crosby also supported the Bowery Mission at 36 Bowery (between Canal and Bayard Streets), Manhattan, which had been founded on November 8, 1879, by Albert Gleason Ruliffson (born April 1, 1833; died May 2, 1896), and his wife, and assisted by J. Ward Childs, as "a Christian Gibraltar amid the swelling tides of sin that dash it on all sides" in "the very center of vice and crime and degredation". As the Bowery Mission welcomed the ministry of women, Crosby worked actively at the Mission, often attending and speaking in the evening meetings. Crosby's involvement in the Bowery Mission was described soon after her death in 1915:

On more than one occasion she visited the Mission hall in New York, and such visits were marked by great outpourings of the unemployed and destitute, who almost worshiped the blind hymn-writer, and sang her songs in her presence with an energy and earnestness that she used to say "almost carried me off my feet." Regularly as her birthday came around, the men of the Mission remembered her with some kindly souvenir, to which she would respond with a helpful letter or a poem. When she spoke at the Mission, which she did at times, the rough audience was hushed, so that they might not miss a syllable of the feeble voice they loved to hear.

Each year until the Mission's building was razed in a fire in 1897, Crosby addressed the large crowds who gathered each year to attend the anniversary service, where she would also recite one of her poems written for the occasion, many of which were set to music by Victor Benke (Ju­ly 1872, Ra­ti­bor, Ger­ma­ny; died July 15, 1904 in New York City), who was the Mission's volunteer organist from 1893 to 1897. Among the songs Crosby and Benke collaborated on were six songs published in 1901: "He Has Promised", "There's a Chorus Ever Ringing", "God Bless Our School Today", "Is There Something I Can Do?", "On Joyful Wings", and "Keep On Watching".

Cremorne Mission (1882)

Cremorne Mission
104 West 32nd Street, New York City

Jerry McAuley
(1839-1884)

Maria McAuley
1847-1919

When Jerry and Maria McAuley started the Cremorne Mission on January 8, 1882, in the Cremorne Garden, a former pleasure garden, at 104 West 32nd Street, as a "beachhead in a vast jungle of vice and debauchery known as Tenderloin" (near Sixth Avenue), Crosby also began supporting this new mission. Crosby ventured regularly to the Cremorne Mission, where she attended the nightly 8.00pm services, where gospel songs written by her and Doane were often sung, including "ballads recalling mother's prayers, reciting the evils of intemperance, or envisioning agonizing deathbed scenes intending to arouse long-buried memories and strengthen resolves". After the death of Jerry McAuley from consumption on September 18, 1884, Crosby was inspired to write a prayer later included in rescue song books:

Lord, behold in Thy compassion

Those who kneel before Thee now;

They are in a sad condition

None can help them, Lord, but Thou.

They are lost, but do not leave them

In their dreary path to roam;

There is pardon, precious pardon

If to Thee by faith they come.

After McAuley's death, Crosby continued to support the Cremorne Mission, now led by Samuel Hopkins Hadley (1842–1906), an alcoholic converted on April 23, 1882, at the Cremorne Mission, and whose mother was a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards, and whose brother was the lawyer and publisher Colonel Henry Harrison Hadley, who was con­verted July 28, 1886, through the ministry of his brother at the Water Street Mission. H.H. Hadley, who in turn brought the Church of England's Church Army to the USA, and started 62 rescue missions, who with his son William Thomas Hadley (born Jan­u­a­ry 7, 1873, New York Ci­ty), "wrote hymn texts and compiled Rescue Songs ... for use in their mission work, using many Crosby numbers that pleaded, cajoled, and assured". Among those hymns was "Dear Jesus, Canst Thou Help Me", and her 1890 song, "I'll Bear It, Lord, for Thee", which Crosby indicated was inspired by Henry Hadley's testimony.

Door of Hope (1890)

File:Emma Whittemore.jpg

Emma Mott Whittemore

Of the several city missions with which Crosby worked, some were operated by proponents of Wesleyan/Holiness doctrine, including the Door of Hope rescue home founded on October 25, 1890, at 102 East 61st Street, New York City, in a house belonging to A.B. Simpson, to be "a refuge and a home for girls of the better class who have been tempted from home and right", and to rescue "fallen girls" by socialite Emma Mott Whittemore (1844–1931), the granddaughter of pioneer surgeon Valentine Mott, Whittemore, who had been raised as a Presbyterian, had been converted with her husband, Sidney, at the Water Street Mission in 1875 during the leadership of Jerry McAuley. affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and was commissioned by the CMA in 1889; "embraced the Wesleyan/Holiness theology of sanctification", and gave her first Door of Hope mission founded in 1885 in New Jersey to The Salvation Army in 1905, and with her husband became leaders of the Salvation Army.

The Door of Hope welcomed women who had been rejected by all other institutions and readmitted them no matter how often they stumbled, as Whittemore, who had initially resisted working with prostitutes, believed that "love was the only means to draw these women into the kingdom of heaven". At the time of Emma Whittemore's death in 1931, the Doors of Hope Union operated 97 homes in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Africa, Japan and China, providing "housing, food, clothing, medical care, spiritual challenge and training in skills such as sewing, dressmaking, and cooking" for unmarried mothers and women seeking to escape prostitution.

Crosby, who had met the Whittemores at the Cremorne Mission, supported the Door of Hope, despite her proclivity to rescue alcoholic men.

Crosby's approach to mission work

Fanny Crosby speaking

Crosby continued to be involved actively in mission work for decades. Sometimes Crosby would address those gathered at the mission service, but often she would ask God to direct her to the person with whom she could have a redemptive conversation. Crosby did not believe in pointing out people's faults to them, saying: "You can't save a man by telling him of his sins. He knows them already. Tell him there is pardon and love waiting for him. Win his confidence and make him understand that you believe in him, and never give him up!" Speaking of city rescue missions, Crosby said: "It is the most wonderful work in the world and it gives such an opportunity for love. That is all people want - love", and "love counts more than anything else", Crosby would use of the strategy of conversational evangelism: she would "sniff out the worst smelling man and sit next to him", and considered each man "one of her boys" whom she would endeavor to love to Jesus.

In a poem written before 1851 that much later became a hymn, Crosby outlined her approach to mission work:

Speak not harshly when reproving

Those from duty's path who stray:

If you would reclaim the erring,

Kindness must each action sway.

Speak not harshly to the wayward;

Win their confidence, their love,

They will feel how pure the motive

That has led them to reprove.

Later years

Mercy Crosby
1799-1890

File:Fanny crosby portrait.jpg

Fanny Crosby

Though her hymn writing declined in later years, Crosby was active in speaking engagements and missionary work among America's urban poor almost until she died. Crosby was very well known during her time and often met with presidents, generals, and other dignitaries. According to Blumhofer, "The popularity of Fanny Crosby's lyrics as well as her winsome personality catapulted her to fame".

On September 2, 1890, Crosby's mother, Mercy Crosby Morris, died in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Bridgeport, Connecticut (1900-1915)

By May 1900 Crosby had been ill for a few months due to a serious heart condition, and still showed some effects from falling down the stairs at the home of evangelist Dwight L. Moody in Northfield, Massachusetts before his death in 1899, which prompted her half-sisters to travel to Brooklyn to convince her to move from her room in the home of poet Will Carleton on Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, New York to Bridgeport, Connecticut to live with Julia "Jule" Athington, her widowed half-sister, who was also accommodating since the death of their mother, her younger sister, Caroline "Carrie" W. Rider, who was also a widow.

Soon after Crosby and Rider rented a room together, before both moving to a rented five-room apartment at 756 State Street, with Mr and Mrs William H. Becker, where they lived until 1906.

After moving to Bridgeport, Crosby usually attended the First Methodist Church, which was located at the northeast corner of Fairfield Avenue and Broad Street. Crosby was also involved actively with the Salvation Army, and the Christian Union rescue mission, often attending the nightly services, and frequently giving a gospel message through her poems and prose. In 1904 Crosby formally transferred her church membership from Cornell Memorial Methodist Church in Manhattan to the First Methodist Church of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Death of Van Alstyne (1902)

Fanny Crosby (1903)

On July 18, 1902, Crosby's husband, Alexander van Alstyne, who was living with Caroline and David Harris Underhill in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, died of a "massive stroke" after a year-long illness associated with asthma and cancer, and in his last month "had suffered a paralytic shock".

Fearing for Crosby's health, William Doane and her publishers, Biglow and Main, convinced Crosby not to travel to New York City at that time. As the descendants of Crosby's step-brother, William Morris (died 1880), were reluctant to have Van Alstyne buried near their family in the Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Biglow and Main organized for Van's body to be stored temporarily in a vault, and there was no funeral. After a few weeks, the wealthy Phoebe Palmer Knapp decided to pay for Van's burial but not a gravestone, and he was buried in grave #587, an unmarked grave, in the Sunny Side section of the Mt. Olivet Cemetery on Border Avenue (between Hope and Clinton Avenues) in Maspeth, New York.

On her 83rd birthday in 1903, Crosby indicated that: "I do not write as much as in other days, but I have not by any means laid aside my pen. My health continues, as has been almost constantly the case for many years, good and sound; my spirits are every bit light and gay as during my girlhood; my enjoyment of all the blessings of life is more full and intense than ever".

Carleton controversy (1904-1905)

Will Carleton

Fanny Crosby's Life-Story (1903)

Some of Crosby's wealthy friends, like Phoebe Palmer Knapp, W. Howard Doane, and Ira Sankey, contributed often to her financial needs, although Crosby still tended to give generously to those she saw as less fortunate than herself. Even after Crosby submitted fewer lyrics to them, The Biglow and Main Company, Crosby's long-time publisher, paid her a small stipend of $8 each week in recognition of her contributions to their business over the years. However, Phoebe Palmer Knapp and others believed Biglow and Main had made enormous profits because of Crosby without compensating her adequately for her contributions, and that she should be living more comfortably in her advanced years.

Another wealthy friend of Crosby was popular American poet, author, and lecturer Will Carleton, with whom Crosby had lived in her last years in Brooklyn, and who had been giving lectures on Crosby's hymns and life, and had published a series of articles on Crosby in his Every Where magazine (which had a peak circulation of 50,000 copies a month) in 1901, for which he paid her $10 an article. In 1902 Carleton wrote a tribute to Crosby that was published in his Songs of Two Centures.

Publisher's Advertisement in
Fanny Crosby's Life-Story

At Knapp's instigation, Carelton revised those articles and wrote Fanny Crosby's Life-Story, a biography authorized initially by Crosby, which was published by July 1903, and reviewed favorably by The New York Times on July 25. Carleton's book sold for $1 a copy. This was the first full-length biographical account of Crosby's life, although Robert Lowry had written a sixteen-page biographical sketch that was published in 1897 in her last book of poems, Bells of Evening and Other Verses. In the advertisement at the front of the book, the following statement from "the author" was signed with a facsimile of Crosby's signature: "'Fanny Crosby's Life-Story' is published and sold for my benefit, and I hope by its means to be a welcome guest in many homes". Additionally, Carleton wrote:

It is sincerely hoped by the publishers of this book may have as large a sale as possible, in order that the story of the its loved author may be an inspiration to many people, and that she may be enabled to have a home of her own, in which to pass the remainder of her days.

According to Bernard Ruffin, Carleton's book "went over like a lead balloon with Fanny's publishers", although there was nothing negative written explicitly about Biglow and Main, but also little praise for the firm and its members. Croby is quoted as referring to Biglow and Main: "with whom I have maintained most cordial and even affectionate relations, for many years past". Carleton's book did not use any of Crosby's hymns owned by Biglow and Main. Hubert Main believed: "Will Carleton wanted to ignore the Biglow & Main Company and all its writers as far as possible and set himself up as the one of her friends who was helping her". Biglow and Main believed Carleton and Knapp were guilty of "a brutal attack on Fanny", and were plotting to "take over" Crosby. Biglow and Main, who were concerned that this book would diminish sales of Crosby's Bells at Evening and Other Verses, which they had published in 1897, and which contained Lowry's biographical sketch of Crosby, and through W. Howard Doane convinced Crosby to write to both Carleton and Knapp, as well as a letter to The New York Times and also to threaten to sue Carelton in April 1904 for an accounting of the sales of the book for which she was promised 10 cents a copy royalties, and seeking an injunction to prevent its continued publication as she believed Carelton misrepresented her by describing her to be in poor health and living alone in extreme poverty, whereas she was receiving $25 a week income from Biglow and Main, and living with relatives who cared for her. Crosby indicated she had no desire to be a homeowner, and that if she was ever living in poverty, it was her choice.

In response to Crosby's letter and threats of a lawsuit, Carleton wrote in an open letter to The New York Times on April 7, 1904, that he was motivated to write his "labor of love" for Crosby in order to raise money that she might have a home of her own for the first time in her life; that he had interviewed Crosby and transcribed the details of her life; had paid her for her time and materials; had secured her permission to publish the material in his magazine Every Where, and in a book; had paid all the expenses for publishing and printing out of his own pocket; had promoted the book in his own time and at his own expense; and had remitted to her $235.20 for the royalties owing for the previous eight months at the agreed rate, and had sent additional contributions given by admirers at his lectures to her. Ira Sankey, who paid the rent on the Bridgeport house where Crosby lived with her half-sister Carrie, implied in an article in The Christian that "the Carleton business had been of Satanic origin and commented, echoing the wheat and tares passage in scripture, 'An enemy hath done this'".

Charles Cardwell McCabe

In 1904 Knapp contacted Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop Charles Cardwell McCabe and enlisted his assistance in publicising Crosby's poverty and raising funds to ameliorate that situation. After securing Crosby's permission to solicit funds for her benefit, in June 1904 the religious press (including The Christian Advocate), carried McCabe's request for money for Crosby under the heading "Fanny Crosby in Need". McCabe indicated that "her hymns have never been copyrighted in her own name, she has sold them for small sums to the publishers who hold the copyright themselves, and the gifted authoress has but little monetary reward for hymns that have been sung all over the world". By July 1904 newspapers reported that Crosby's publishers had issued a statement denying Crosby was in need of funds, and indicated she never would be "as they have provided abundantly for her during her entire life", and that "Bishop McCabe, who issued an appeal for assistance for Miss Crosby has been grossly deceived by somebody". In response to Bishop McCabe's fundraising on her behalf, Crosby also wrote a letter to him which was published at her instigation, which permitted him to solicit funds from her friends as "a testimonial of their love", but reiterated that she was not living in poverty, nor was she dying or in poor health. After Crosby and her representatives contacted him, a week later, McCabe wrote to The Christian Advocate explaining his rationale for raising funds for Crosby, but that he was now withdrawing the appeal at her request.

In July 1904, the matter was still not settled, however it came to an end before Fanny Crosby Day in March 1905, after Carleton's wife, Adora Niles Goodell Carleton (born 1847 in Halifax, Vermont), died suddenly of apoplexy on November 9, 1904 in their home at 420 Greene Street, Brooklyn.

In 1905 Carleton issued a new edition of Fannie Crosby, Her Life Work, which was both expanded and "newly illustrated", and despite "the greater expense of production, the price remains One Dollar a copy", with Crosby to "receive the same liberal royalty", as the book was "SOLD FOR THE BLIND AUTHOR'S BENEFIT". In December 1905 Crosby issued a card protesting the continued sale of Carleton's book, again denying she was "in distress", as she was in "comfortable circumstances and very active", giving lectures at leat once a week. Crosby indicated she had received less than $325 from the sale of the book, that her "requests had been disregarded", but that "when these facts are fully known to all, the publishers can sell the book as they desire; only I have no wish to increase its sale for my own benefit, which, of course, is very small".

Despite Crosby's efforts, Carleton still advertised the book for sale in his Every Where magazine every year until at least 1911. In 1911 Carleton serialised and updated Crosby's life story in Every Where. The 1906 publication by the James H. Earle Company of Boston, Massachusetts of Crosby's own autobiography, Memories of Eighty Years, which, in contrast to Carleton's book focused on Crosby's hymn-writing years, was sold by subsciption and door-to-door, and promoted in lectures by Doane, raised $1,000 for Crosby.

For a period Crosby and Knapp were estranged in their relationship because of the Carleton book, but were later reconciled before Knapp's death in July 1908.

Fanny Crosby Day (1905)

Fanny Crosby at home

Fanny Crosby (1906)

On Sunday, March 26, 1905, Fanny Crosby Day was celebrated in churches of many denominations (including Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Congregational) throughout the United States and around the world, including Tasmania and the Territory of Hawaii, with special worship services in honor of her 85th birthday, two days earlier. On that day Crosby attended the First Baptist Church in Bridgeport where Carrie Rider was a member, and spoke in the evening service, and was given $85.

In September 1905, when the Methodist Episcopal Church issued their first new hymn book since 1878, it contained "a considerable number by Fanny Crosby".

Because of Carrie Rider's cancer, in Summer 1906 Crosby and Rider moved to 226 Wells Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut to live with Henry D. Booth and his wife, Florence W. Booth, the daughter of Crosby's step-brother, William Morris, whom Crosby called her niece, and two of the Booth children, and one of their a cousins. Carrie died of intestinal cancer in July 1907.

On July 10, 1908, Crosby's friend, benefactor, and collaborator, Phoebe Palmer Knapp died while vacationing in Poland, Maine. Weeks later, Ira D. Sankey, who had been blind for the last five years of his life, died at his home at 148 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, about 7.00pm on August 13, 1908. Just before he died, Sankey chose to sing "Saved by Grace", one of Crosby's most popular compositions:

Some day the silver chord will break

And I no more, as now, will sing;

But oh! the joy when I awake

Within the Palace of the King.

On May 2, 1911, Crosby spoke to 5,000 people at the opening meeting of the Evangelistic Committee's seventh annual campaign held in Carnegie Hall, after the crowd sang her songs for thirty minutes.

On the occasion of her 94th birthday in March 1914, Alice Rector and the King's Daughters of the First Methodist Church of Bridgeport, Connecticut organized a Violet Day to honor Crosby, which was publicised nationally by Hugh Main.

Death and legacy

After a six-month illness, Crosby died of arterio sclerosis and a cerebral hemorrhage at 4.30am on February 12, 1915 at 226 Wells Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut, the home of her step-brother's daughter, Florence W. Booth, who was at her death bed with other relatives.

Crosby's funeral services were held at the First Methodist Episcopal Church (now known as the Golden Hill United Methodist church) at the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Broad Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut, on February 15, 1915, when hundreds of friends assembled. Delegations from various organizations of women were in attendance. White violets, her favorite flowers, almost hid the casket from view. Rev. George M. Brown officiated.

Monument to P.T. Barnum, Mountain Grove Cemetery, Bridgeport, Connecticut

Crosby was buried at the P.T. Barnum-designed Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport, Connecticut, near to her mother, Mercy Crosby Morris, and other members of the Morris family, and close to a large monument to Barnum, which is visible from the Morris family graves. Before she died, Crosby made her half-sister "promise not to erect a large grave marker for her, because she thought Barnum's was a disgusting symbol of his ego". At Crosby's request, her family erected a very small tombstone, which carried the words: "Aunt Fanny: She hath done what she could; Fanny J. Crosby".

File:Eliza E Hewitt.jpg

Eliza Edmunds Hewitt

Presbyterian poet Eliza Edmunds Hewitt (born June 28, 1851, in Phil­a­del­phia, Penn­syl­van­ia; died: Ap­ril 24, 1920, in Phil­a­del­phia, Penn­syl­van­ia), also known as Lidie H. Edmunds, the Sun­day School sup­er­in­tend­ent at the North­ern Home for Friend­less Child­ren in Philadelphia, who was a close, personal friend of Crosby, and who had written such gospel songs as "When We All Get to Heaven" (1898) and "Sunshine in My Soul" (1887), memorialized Crosby’s passing in a poem:

Away to the country of sunshine and song,

Our songbird has taken her flight,

And she who has sung in the darkness so long

Now sings in the beautiful light.

Fanny Crosby Day (1925)

In March 1925, about 3,000 churches throughout the United Stats observed Fanny Crosby Day to commemmorate the 105th anniversary of her birth.

Fanny Crosby Memorial Home for the Aged (1925-1996)

Concerned for the plight of elderly men of low income, Crosby left money in her will for "the sheltering of senior males who had no other place to live, with these men to pay a nominal fee to the home for their living expenses". In 1923 the King's Daughters of the First Methodist Church of Bridgeport, Connecticut honored Crosby's request to memorialize her by beginning to raise the additional funds needed to establish the Fanny Crosby Memorial Home for the Aged. The Fanny Crosby Home, a nondenominational refuge was established in the former Hunter house at 1088 Fairfield Avenue, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and opened on November 1, 1925, after a national drive by the Federation of Churches to raise $100,000 to operate it. It was described as a "commodious dwelling on Bridgeport's Fairfield Avenue dedicated to offering a congenial atmosphere and caring environment in which, at modest cost, the elderly could live out their days". By 1939 the Fanny Crosby Home accommodated 32 elderly men and women. It operated until 1996 when it was given to the Bridgeport Rescue Mission, who provided short-term accommodation and served 110,000 meals a year, and ran "a three-meal-a-day soup kitchen, a mobile kitchen program, a homeless shelter and a residential drug rehabilitation center" that was housed in the Fanny Crosby Memorial Home. However, the decision of the city of Bridgeport to revoke the Home's tax-exempt status and to assess taxes on the property resulted in a tax liability of $300,000, and threatened its ability to continue to operate.

On Monday October 8, 1934, the Enoch Crosby chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated an historic roadside marker commemorating the birthplace of Crosby on the western side of Route 22, in Doansburg, New York.

Despite her specific instructions not to erect a large marble monument for her that was similar to that of P.T. Barnum, which was near Mercy Morris' grave, at 3.30pm on Sunday, on May 1, 1955, a large memorial stone that "dwarfed the original gravestone" was dedicated by Crosby's "friends to whom her life was an inspiration". It contained the first stanza of "Blessed Assurance".

Other honors

Crosby was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1975.

During 2010 the songwriter George Hamilton IV undertook a tour of Methodist chapels celebrating Fanny's outstanding contribution to gospel music. His presentation included stories of her productive and charitable life, some of her hymns and a few of his own uplifting songs.

Crosby is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on February 11.

Selected list of works

Autobiographies

• [Carleton, Will]. Fanny Crosby's Life-Story. New York, NY: Every Where Publishing Company, 1903.
• [Carleton, Will]. Fanny Crosby's Life-Work. New York, NY: Every Where Publishing Company, 1905.
• Mem­o­ries of Eighty Years. Boston, MA: James H. Earle & Company, 1906.
• Keller, Cozette; Fanny Crosby, and William Howard Doane. Safe in the Arms of Jesus: Illustrated Pantomimed Hymn. Edgar S. Werner, 1917.
• This is My Story, This Is My Song, 1906. ISBN 978-1-898787-41-9.

Books of poetry

• The Blind Girl. Wiley & Putnam, 1844.
• Monterey and Other Po­ems. R. Craighead, 1851.
• A Wreath of Co­lum­bia’s Flow­ers. H. Dayton, 1858.
• Bells at Ev­en­ing and Other Vers­es; with Biographical Sketch by Robert Lowry. New York, NY: Big­low & Main, 1897; 3rd ed., New York, NY and Chicago, IL: Big­low & Main,1899.

Cantatas

• -------- and George Frederick Root. The Flower Queen: A Tonic Sol-fa Cantata. Advertiser and Chronicle Offices, 1880.
• -------- and George Frederick Root. Libretto of The Flower Queen; or the Coronation of the Rose. New York: Mason Brothers, 1853.
• -------- and Theodore E. Perkins. "The Excursion". In The Mount Zion Collection of Sacred and Secular Music: Consisting of Tunes, Anthems, Singing School Exercises and Songs for the Sabbath School and Social Circle. Edited by Theodore E. Perkins. New York, NY: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1869.
• -------- and William Howard Doane. Santa Claus' Home; or, The Christmas Excursion: A Christmas Cantata for the Sunday School and Choir. Biglow & Main, 1886.
• DANIEL: or the Captivity and Restoration. A Sacred Cantata in Three Parts, Words selected and prepared by C[hauncy]. M[arvin]. Cady, Esq., [1824-1889], assisted by Miss F[rances]. J[ane]. Crosby. [Mrs. Van Alstyne] [1820-1915]. Music composed by Geo[rge]. F[rederick]. Root [1820-1895] and W[illiam]. B[atchelder]. Bradbury [1816-1868],
• Root, George Frederick; Fanny Crosby; and Henry Fisher. The New Flower Queen: or, The Coronation of the Rose. A Cantata in Two Parts, for the Use of Singing Classes in Academies, Ladies' Schools, and High Schools. Oliver Ditson co., 1870.

Selected hymns

• "All the Way My Savior Leads Me"--1875, music by Robert Wadsworth Lowry
• "Blessed Assurance"--1873, music by Phoebe Knapp
• "The Bright Forever"--1871, music by Hubert P. Main
• "Close to Thee"--1874, music by Silas J. Vail
• "Eye Hath Not Seen"--1890, music by George C. Stebbins
• "He Hideth My Soul"--1890, music by William J. Kirkpatrick
• "I Am Thine, O Lord (Draw Me Nearer)"--1875, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home (Jesus is Calling)"--1883, music by George C. Stebbins
• "My Savior First of All"--1891, music by John R. Sweney
• "Near the Cross"--1869, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour"--1868, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Praise Him! Praise Him! Jesus, Our Blessed Redeemer!"--1869, music by Chester G. Allen
• "Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It!"--1882, William J. Kirkpatrick
• "Rescue the Perishing"--1869, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Safe in the Arms of Jesus"--1868, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Saved by Grace"--1891, music by George C. Stebbins
• "Savior, More Than Life to Me"--1875, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Take the World, But Give Me Jesus"--1879, music by John R. Sweney
• "Tell Me the Story of Jesus"--1880, music by John R. Sweney
• "To God Be the Glory"--1875, music by W. Howard Doane
• "Unsearchable Riches"--1882, music by John R. Sweney

See also

• 1884 in music

Further reading

Articles and chapters

• Artman, William and Lansing V. Hall, "Miss Frances Jane Crosby", 168-179. In Beauties and Achievements of the Blind. Published for the Authors, 1854.
• Blumhofer, Edith L. "Fanny Crosby in Protestant Hymnody", 215ff. In Music in American Religious Experience. Edited by Philip Vilas Bohlman, Edith Waldvogel Blumhofer, and Maria M. Chow. Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Blumhofer, Edith L. "Fanny Crosby, William Doane, and the Making of Gospel Hymns in the Late Nineteenth Century". In Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America, 152-171. Edited by Mark A. Noll and Edith L. Blumhofer. University of Alabama Press, 2006.
• Bowden, Henry Warner. "Crosby, Frances Jane", 131-132. In Dictionary of American Religious Biography. 2nd ed. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993.
• Bradbury, Woodman. "Fanny Crosby". In Heroines of Modern Religion, 115-133. Edited by Warren Dunham Foster. Sturgis, 1913.
• Burger, Delores T. "Home Missionary: Fanny Crosby". In Women Who Changed the Heart of the City: The Untold Story of the City Rescue Mission Movement. Kregel Publications, 1997.
• Crawford, Richard. "George Frederick Root (1820-1895) and American Vocal Music", 151ff. In The American Musical Landscape: The Business of Muscianship from Billings to Gershwin. University of California Press, 2000.
• Elbin, Paul E. "Fanny Crosby and William H. Doane Have Had Their Day". The Hymn 21 (January 1970):12-16.
• "Frances Jane Van Alstyne: Poet and Hymn Writer". In The National Cyclopædia of American Biography, Vol. 7. New York, NY: James T. White & Company, 1897.
• Hall, Nancy E. "'And giveth me songs in the night': Gospel Hymn Author Fanny Crosby", Whole Earth Review (Spring, 1993).And giveth me songs in the night - gospel hymn author Fanny Crosby | Whole Earth Review | Find Articles at BNET
• Hartsock, Ralph. "Crosby, Frances Jane "Fanny" (1820–1915)", 192-193. In Women in the American Civil War, Vol. 2. Edited by Lisa Tendrich Frank. ABC-CLIO, 2008.
• Hobbs, June Hadden. "His Religion and Hers in Nineteenth Century Hymnody", 120-144. In Nineteenth-century Women Learn to Write. Edited by Catherine Hobbs. University of Virginia Press, 1995.
• McNeil, W.K. "Root, George Frederick", 324-325. In Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. Edited by W. K. McNeil. Routledge, 2005.
• Rodenburg, Louis W. "The Song Bird in the Dark". Part 1. In Outlook for the Blind 25 (December 1931):155-160,
• Rodenburg, Louis W. "The Song Bird in the Dark". Part 2. In Outlook for the Blind 26 (March 1932):42-47,
• Sawyer, Mrs. C.M. "A Visit to the Institution for the Blind". In Universalist Union 7. (P. Price, 1842):397-399.
• Wilhoff, Mel R. "Crosby, Fanny Jane", 91-92. In Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music. Edited by W. K. McNeil. Routledge, 2005.
• Willard, Frances Elizabeth and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. "Crosby, Fanny J.", 217f. In American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies with over 1,400 Portraits: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of the Lives and Achievements of American Women During the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1 .Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1897.

Dissertations and theses

• Danner, John Howard. (1989) "The Hymns of Fanny Crosby and the Search for Assurance: Theology in a Different Key". Ph.D. dissertation. Boston, MA: Boston University.

Monographs

Biographies

• Barrett, Ethel. (1984) Fanny Crosby. Gospel Light Publications.
• Blumhofer, Edith L. (2005) Her Heart Can See: the Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-4253-4.
• Carleton, Will, ed. (1903) Fanny Crosby's Life-Story by Herself. New York, NY: Every Where Publishing Company.
• Casswell, John Reginald. (1939) Fanny Crosby: The Sightless Songstress, Author of 8000 Hymns. Pickering & Inglis.
• Davis, Rebecca. (2003) Fanny Crosby: Queen of Gospel Songs. Journeyforth.
• Dengler, Sandy. (1985) Fanny Crosby: Writer of 8,000 Songs. Chicago, IL: Moody Press.
• Harvey, Bonnie C. (1999) Fanny Crosby. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House.
• Hearn, Chester. Safe in the Arms of Jesus: Biography of Fanny Crosby. ISBN 978-0-87508-665-1.
• Jackson, S. Trevena. (1912) An Evening of Song and Story with Fanny J. Crosby. New York and Chicago: The Biglow & Main Co.
• Jackson, Samuel Trevena. (1915) Fanny Crosby's Story of Ninety-four Years: Retold by S. Trevena Jackson. New York: F.H. Revell.
• Loveland, John. (1978) Blessed Assurance: The Life and Hymns of Fanny J. Crosby. Broadman Press.
• Miller, Basil William. (1950) Fanny Crosby: Singing I Go. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.
• Neptune, Darlene. (2002) Fanny Crosby Still Lives. Pelican Publishing.
• Rice, George W. (1991) Fanny Crosby: A Woman of Faith. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.
• Ruffin, Bernard. (1985) Fanny Crosby: the Hymn Writer. Barbour Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55748-731-5.

Other monographs

• Adamson, Lynda G. (1999) Notable Women in American History: A Guide to Recommended Biographies and Autobiographies. Greenwood Press.
• Bonner, Arthur. (1990) Jerry McAuley and His Mission. New York, NY: Loizeaux Brothers. ISBN 978-0-87213-060-9 ISBN 978-0-87213-060-9
• Bradley, Ian C. (1997) Abide with Me: The World of Victorian Hymns. GIA Publications.
• Burrage, Henry S. (1888) Baptist Hymn Writers and Their Hymns. Portland, ME: Brown Thurston & Co.
• Campbell, Helen Stuart; Thomas W. Knox; and Thomas Byrnes. (1892) Darkness and Daylight or Lights and Shadows of New York Life: A Pictorial Record of Personal Experiences by Day and Night in the Great Metropolis. Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington and Co.; (1897) Hartford Publishing Company.[24]
• Carder, Polly. (2008) George F. Root, Civil War Songwriter: A Biography. McFarland.
• Chapman, John Wilbur. (1906) S. H. Hadley of Water Street: A Miracle of Grace. New York, NY: Fleming H. Revell.
• Ewing, George W. (1977) The Well-Tempered Lyre: Songs & Verse of the Temperance Movement. Southern Methodist University Press.
• Gray, Janet. (1997) She Wields a Pen: American Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. University of Iowa Press.
• Hadley, Samuel H. (1902) Down in Water Street: A Story of Sixteen Years Life and Work in Water Street Mission. by Samuel H. Hadley. New York, NY: Fleming H. Revell.
• Hall, Jacob Henry. (1914) Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers. New York: Fleming H. Revell.
• Hobbs, June Hadden. (1997) I Sing for I Cannot Be Silent: The Feminization of American Hymnody, 1870-1920. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Kent, John. (1978) Holding the Fort: Studies in Victorian Revivalism. Epworth Press.
• Long, Edwin McKean. (1876) Illustrated History of Hymns and their Authors: Facts and Incidents of the Origin, Authors, Sentiments and Singing of Hymns. 2nd ed. P.W. Ziegler.
• McAuley, Jerry. (1876) Transformed, or The History of a River Thief. New York, NY.
• Magnuson, Norris A. (1977) Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work, 1865-1920. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
• Maxey, Duane V. ed. (2000) The Story of Jerry McAuley, His Conversion, Establishment in Grace, and His Water Street Mission Work By Jerry McAuley. Holiness Data Ministry.[25]
• Morgan, Robert J. (2003) Then Sings my Soul: 150 of the World's Greatest Hymn Stories. Thomas Nelson Inc.
• Mouw, Richard J. and Mark A. Noll. (2004) Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology. Wm. B. Eerdmans.
• Music, David W. and Paul Akers Richardson. (2008) "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story": A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. Mercer University Press.
• Offord, R.M., ed. (1885) Jerry McAuley: His Life and Work. New York, NY: Ward & Drummond.
• Offord, R.M., ed. (1907) Jerry McAuley: Apostle to the Lost. 7th ed. New York, NY: American Tract Society.
• Osbeck, Kenneth W. (1982). 101 Hymn Stories: The Inspiring True Stories behind 101 Favorite Hymns. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
• Osbeck, Kenneth W. (1985). 101 More Hymn Stories: The Inspiring True Stories behind 101 Favorite Hymns. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
• Osbeck, Kenneth W. (2002). Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
• Root, George Frederick. (1891) The Story of a Musical Life: An Autobiography. Cincinnati, OH: John Church.
• Sankey, Ira David. (1906) My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns and of Sacred Songs and Solos. Philadelphia, Sunday School Times Co.[26]
• Schwanz, Keith. (1997) The Birth of a Hymn: Spiritual Biographies of 20 Hymn Writers and the Experiences That Inspired Them. Kansas City, MO: Lillenas.
• Sizer, Sandra S. (1978) Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
• Smith, Jane Stuart, and Betty Carlson. (1997). Great Christian Hymn Writers. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
• Smith, Nicholas, comp. (1903) Songs from the Hearts of Women: One Hundred Famous Hymns and Their Writers. A.C. McClurg.
• Warren, James I. (1988) O For a Thousand Tongues: The History, Nature, and Influence of Music in the Methodist Tradition. Francis Asbury Press.
• Whittemore, Emma M. (1931) Mother Whittemore's Records of Modern Miracles. Edited by F.A. Robinson. Toronto: Missions of Biblical Education.
• Wiersbe, Warren W. (2009) 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Spiritual Giants of the Faith. Baker Books.

Hymnals and Song Books

• Bliss, P.P., and Ira Sankey, eds. Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs; as used by them in Gospel Meetings. New York, NY: Biglow & Main, and John Church & Co., 1875.
• Bradbury, William B., ed. Fresh Laur­els for the Sab­bath School: A New and Extensive Collection of Music and Hymns. Prepared Expressly for the Sabbath Schools. New York, NY: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 1867.
• Bradbury, William Batchelder, ed. The Golden Censer: A Musical Offering to the Sabbath Schools, of Children's Hosannas to the Son of David. New York, NY: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 1864.
• Doane, W.H., ed. Songs of De­vo­tion for Christian Assocations. New York, NY: Big­low & Main, 1870.
• Elderkin, G.E., ed., The Fin­est of Wheat, No. 1. Chi­ca­go, IL: R.R. Mc­Cabe, 1890.
• Excell, E.O., ed. Winona Hymns Compiled by J. Wilbur Chapman For The Evangelist Committee. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1906.
• Hadley, Colonel Henry, comp. Rescue Songs. Published for the Rescue Volunteers, 1893.
• Hustad, Donald P., ed. Fanny Crosby Speaks Again: 120 Hymns. Carol Stream, IL.: Hope Publishing. Co., 1977.
• Lowry, Robert, ed. Bright Jewels for the Sunday School, a new collection of Sunday School songs written expressly for this work, many of which are the latest compositions of William B. Bradbury, and have never before been published. New York, NY: Biglow & Main, 1869.
• Lowry, Robert and W. How­ard Doane. Bright­est and Best. New York, NY and Chicago, IL: Big­low & Main, 1875.
• Lowry, Robert; W. Howard Doane; and Ira D. Sankey. Welcome Tidings: A Collection of Sacred Songs for the Sunday School. New York, NY: Biglow & Main, 1877.
• Main, H.P., ed. The Chautauqua Collection. New York, NY: Biglow & Main Co., 1875.
• Ogden, W.A., ed. New Silver Song. Toledo, OH: W.W. Whitney, 1872.
• Perkins, Theodore E. and Alfred Taylor, eds. Songs of Salvation: Work Songs. T.E. Perkins, 1870.
• Phillips, Philip, ed. The Singing Pilgrim; or, Pilgrim's Progress Illustrated in Song, for the Sabbath School, Church, and Family. New York, NY and Cincinnati, OH: Philip Phillips & Co., 1866.
• Root, George F. The Academy Vocalist; or Vocal Music Arranged for the Use of Seminaries, High Schools, Singing Classes, Etc. New York, NY: Mason Brothers, 1852.
• [Root, George F.]. Six Songs by Wurzel. Cleveland, OH: S. Brainard’s Sons, 1855.
• Sankey, Ira D.; James McGranahan; and George C. Stebbins, eds. Sacred Songs No. 1, compiled and arranged for use in Gospel Meetings, Sunday Schools, Prayer Meetings and other religious services. New York, NY: The Biglow & Main Co., 1896.
• Sherwin, W.F. and S.J. Vail, eds. Songs of Grace and Glory for Sunday Schools. New York, NY: Horace Waters & Son, 1874.
• Stebbins, George C., ed., Fannie Crosby Memorial Song Book. Chicago, IL: Hope Publishing Co., 1917.

DVDs

• Fanny Crosby. Intercomm . 90 mins.
• The Fanny Crosby Story. Vision Video. 46 mins.

Archival materials

• "Papers of Fanny Crosby", Collection 35. Wheaton, IL: Billy Graham Center Archives.Papers of Fanny Crosby - Collection 35

External links

• The New York Institute for Special Education page on Fanny Crosby
• Fanny Crosby page at the Cyber Hymnal Words, MIDI & sheet music for over 500 hymns.
• List of Crosby compositions from 1861
• Over 2,500 Crosby hymn texts
• Biography at Believers' Web
• Biographies at Wholesome Words
• Blessed Assurance music and lyrics

This page originally based on public domain information from The Cyber Hymnal