Francis Duckworth

Born: De­cem­ber 25, 1862, Rim­ing­ton, York­shire, Eng­land.
Died: Au­gust 16, 1941, at his home Swan­side in Colne, Eng­land.
Buried: St. Ma­ry the Vir­gin Ang­li­can Church, Gis­burn, Lan­ca­shire. His grave­stone bears the mu­sic of Rim­ing­ton, and a plaque to his mem­o­ry was placed above the door­way to the for­mer Meth­od­ist Cha­pel in Stop­per Lane, Lan­ca­shire.

When Duck­worth was five years old, his fam­i­ly moved to the vil­lage of Stop­per Lane, near Rim­ing­ton. He had to leave school at age 12 to help in the fam­i­ly bus­i­ness. At age 20, he moved to Burn­ley, Lan­ca­shire, to work for a to­bac­co­nist cou­sin. Six years lat­er, he re­turned to live at Colne, and in 1899 took a gro­cery bus­i­ness in Mar­ket Street, Colne.

Duckworth had an ear­ly in­ter­est in mu­sic, but re­ceived on­ly three months of for­mal les­sons. Short­ly af­ter ar­riv­ing in Colne, he be­came de­pu­ty or­gan­ist (lat­er or­gan­ist) at the Al­bert Road Meth­od­ist Church, serv­ing un­til 1929. He com­posed nu­mer­ous hymn tunes, 18 of them ap­pear­ing in the Rim­ing­ton Hym­nal. His tune Rim­ing­ton was sung by a mas­sive con­gre­ga­tion of Bri­tish troops on the Mount of Ol­ives af­ter the sur­ren­der of Je­ru­sa­lem dur­ing World War I.

--www.hymntime.com/tch