1868 - 1927 Person Name: William Byron Forbush Author of "God of our youth" in The Beacon Song and Service book Born: February 20, 1868, Springfield, Vermont.
Died: October 23, 1927, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Buried: Quaker Burial Grounds, Hartford Road, Baltimore, Maryland.
Forbush graduated from Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1888, and became a principal in Amherst, New Hampshire, the next year. He served as pastor of the Riverside Congregational Church, Riverside, Rhode Island (1893-94), entered Union Theological Seminary, in 1889, graduating in 1892. He received an AM in 1890 and PhD in 1892 from the University of New York, and was acting pastor at the Rockaway Church in Brooklyn while enrolled in 1890. He served as pastor at Riverside Church in East Providence, Rhode Island (1892); Tabernacle Church, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (1894-96); Warren, Massachusetts (1896-1908); Winthrop Church, Boston, Massachusetts (1905-06); and Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan (to 1913). In 1913, he became President of the American Institute of Child Life in Philadelphia, resigning in 1914 to pursue writing. He established his home in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where he lived the rest of his life and for a time headed the Woolman House, a school of social and religious education under the Quaker management of Swarthmore. In 1895, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Hanover College, Indiana. He founded the Knights of King Arthur in 1893, which attracted thousands of young boys. In 1918, he became General Editor of the publications of the University Society of New York, serving until 1924, when he became consulting editor of the John C. Winston Publishing Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His works include:
The Queens of Avalon, 1911
The Coming Generation (New York & London: D. Appleton and Company, 1912)
Manual of Stories, 1915
The Wonder Book of Myths and Legends (The John C. Winston Company: 1928)
Myths and Legends of Greece and Rome
--www.hymntime.com/tch/
William B. Forbush