Some lives produce one great work, and the world calls them blessed. Other lives produce so much that no one can quite count it, and the world simply learns their songs by heart. Fanny Crosby belonged to the second kind. She walked through nine decades of hardship and devotion and gave the church a body of hymns so vast that scholars are still untangling which ones are hers. Here are five facts about her life that may surprise you.
1. Her most famous hymn depends on who you ask
Frances Jane Crosby was born in Brewster, New York, 1820, and by the end of her life she had given the church such a wealth of hymns that even her admirers cannot agree on which one is her greatest. For many today, the answer is “Blessed Assurance.” The story behind it is one of the most charming in all of hymnody. In 1873, her friend Phoebe Palmer Knapp sat down at the piano and played a new melody she had composed. She turned to Fanny and asked what the music said. Without hesitation, Fanny answered, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.” The hymn was published three times that same year and quickly became a standard.
But older references tell a different tale. The Encyclopaedia Britannica identifies “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” as her best-known hymn, listing it alongside “Blessed Assurance,” “Rescue the Perishing,” and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” as some of her finest work. So it is fair to say that Fanny’s most famous hymn is whichever one happens to be sung in your church this Sunday.
2. She was blind from infancy, but the details are more complicated than the legend
Fanny lost her sight as an infant, though the exact circumstances have been debated for nearly two hundred years. Her own account held that an eye infection at about six weeks old was badly treated, and the treatment took her sight. Some modern scholars have suggested she may have been born blind, though Crosby herself gave a different account. Either way, the loss was permanent. Her father died when she was only six months old, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother.
She later attended the New York Institution for the Blind, where she was both student and, in time, teacher. Yet here is the detail that astonishes: Fanny never used Braille, for the system was still developing in her early years and would not become widespread until decades later. So how did a blind woman compose thousands of hymns? She composed them in her mind and dictated them aloud. Many a hymn now sung in countless churches first existed only as words held in Fanny’s memory.
3. Her husband was also blind, and they lived apart but never divorced
In 1858, Fanny married Alexander Van Alstyne, a former pupil at the Institution who later returned as a teacher. He was, like her, blind. Their only child, a daughter, was born in 1859 and died in infancy. The marriage did not flourish, and from around 1880 onward the two lived apart. They never divorced, however, and remained legally married until Alexander’s death in 1902.
Of this season Fanny said little publicly. She poured herself instead into mission work, into writing, and into the rescue missions of New York, where the gospel message was most desperately needed. Her personal sorrows did not close her life inward. Instead, she kept giving herself to the work God placed before her.
4. She had a whole hit-making team of collaborators
Fanny was a lyricist, not chiefly a composer. Her words traveled the world because a network of musicians and evangelists set them to music and carried them into pulpits and parlors and tent meetings across the country. Phoebe Palmer Knapp gave us the tune for “Blessed Assurance.” William H. Doane, the great gospel-song composer, is said by the American Baptist Historical Society to have written music for an estimated 1,500 of Fanny’s poems. Ira D. Sankey, the famous singer who traveled with the evangelist Dwight L. Moody, was another of her closest musical partners.
Lyricist, friend, partner in the gospel song; Fanny stood at the center of a 19th-century hymn-making fellowship that sent her words to every corner of the English-speaking world. Few writers in any field have ever had such a network, and fewer still have used it so faithfully for the cause of Christ.
5. Her output was so vast that no one knows the exact count
How many hymns did Fanny Crosby write? Five thousand? Seven thousand? Nine thousand? No one can say with certainty. The estimates range from 5,500 to 9,000, and the precise figure may never be known. The trouble is not lost manuscripts. The trouble is that she wrote under so many pseudonyms that even her publishers could not keep up. Britannica suggests she may have used as many as 200 pen names. Hymnology Archive lists examples such as Grace J. Frances, Mrs. C. M. Wilson, Lizzie Edwards, Ella Dale, Henrietta E. Blair, Rose Atherton, Maud Marion, and Leah Carlton.
So great was her output that her own name could not contain it. Indeed, she wrote so much, for so long, under so many names, that scholars are still working out which hymns are truly hers. It is the kind of problem that only comes from a life poured out without measure.
A final word
Wherever you are in life, whatever burdens you may carry, never believe the lie that hardship disqualifies you from kingdom work. Just look at Fanny Crosby, blind from infancy, living apart from her husband later in life, no stranger to grief, and yet one of the most prolific hymn writers the church has ever known. The next time you sing “Blessed Assurance” or “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” remember the woman who composed those words entirely in her mind, dictated them aloud, and trusted God to carry them the rest of the way.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.
by Don Chapman