Work in the Day; Night cometh when no one works

                                   Fanny Crosby

                                                               1820-1915

   Born: March 24, 1820, Put­nam Coun­ty, New York.

   Died: Feb­ru­a­ry 12, 1915, Bridge­port, Con­nec­ti­cut.

  Buried: Bridge­port, Con­nec­ti­cut.

Fanny Cros­by was prob­ab­ly the most pro­lif­ic hymn­ist in his­to­ry. Though blind­ed by an in­com­pe­tent doc­tor at six weeks of age, she wrote over 8,000 hymns. About her blind­ness, she said:

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.

In her life­time, Fan­ny Cros­by was one of the best known wo­men in the Unit­ed States. To this day, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Amer­i­can hymn­als con­tain her work.

When Fan­ny died, her tomb­stone car­ried the words, “Aunt Fan­ny” and “Bless­ed as­sur­ance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a fore­taste of glo­ry di­vine.” Eli­za Hew­itt me­mor­i­al­ized Fan­ny’s pass­ing in a po­em which was read at her fun­er­al:

    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;The harp-strings here broken are sweetly restrung To ring in a chorus sublime; The hymns that on earth she so trustfully sung Keep tune with eternity’s chime!