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Chas. H. Gabriel

1856 - 1932 Composer of "[A nation's heroes calmly sleep]" in Brotherhood Hymns Pseudonyms: C. D. Emerson, Charlotte G. Homer, S. B. Jackson, A. W. Lawrence, Jennie Ree ============= For the first seventeen years of his life Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (b. Wilton, IA, 1856; d. Los Angeles, CA, 1932) lived on an Iowa farm, where friends and neighbors often gathered to sing. Gabriel accompanied them on the family reed organ he had taught himself to play. At the age of sixteen he began teaching singing in schools (following in his father's footsteps) and soon was acclaimed as a fine teacher and composer. He moved to California in 1887 and served as Sunday school music director at the Grace Methodist Church in San Francisco. After moving to Chicago in 1892, Gabriel edited numerous collections of anthems, cantatas, and a large number of songbooks for the Homer Rodeheaver, Hope, and E. O. Excell publishing companies. He composed hundreds of tunes and texts, at times using pseudonyms such as Charlotte G. Homer. The total number of his compositions is estimated at about seven thousand. Gabriel's gospel songs became widely circulated through the Billy Sunday-Homer Rodeheaver urban crusades. Bert Polman

Laura E. Newell

1854 - 1916 Author of "A Nation's Heroes Calmly Sleep" in Gospel Hymn Selections for Male Voices Born: February 5, 1854, New Marlborough, Connecticut. Died: October 13, 1916, Manhattan, Kansas. Daughter of Mr. and Edward A. Pixley, but orphaned as an infant, Laura was adopted by her aunt, then Mrs. Hiram Mabie, who at the time lived in New York. In 1858, the Mabie family moved to a farm south of where Wamego, Kansas, now stands. Two years after the move, Mr. Mabie died, and his wife resumed teaching. In 1860, Mrs. Mabie accepted a position in Topeka, Kansas, where she taught many years. Under her tutelage, Laura received her education. As early as age 12, Laura was writing rhymes, and two years later her poems began to appear in local newspapers. She had no thought of a literary career; she simply wrote to give vent to her poetical mind. In 1871, Laura married Lauren Newell, a carpenter from Manhattan, Kansas. They had at least six children, and belonged to the Congregational denomination. In 1873, Laura was listening to an address by a speaker who lamented the death of "genuine" hymns, and she resolved to try her hand in that line of work. That began a long period of writing songs, sacred and secular, services for all anniversary occasions, cantatas, adapting words to music, and music to words. "Mrs. Newell is indeed a prolific writer. Her poems number in the thousands. She has had over eight hundred poems published in a single year, a most remarkable record. The great ease with which Mrs. Newell writes is one of her special gifts. Not long since an order, accompanied by music and titles, was sent her for eight poems to suit. At seven o’clock in the evening she sat down to her organ to catch the music. Then she went to her desk, and at ten o’clock the order was ready for the return mail. Her work pleased the publisher so well that he sent her an order for forty-eight additional poems. Mrs. Newell writes several hundred poems annually. She is a very modest and unpretentious lady, and goes about her daily work as cheerfully as her poems advise others to do. The deeply religious character of the woman stands out boldly in nearly all her work. The next world is apparently as real to her as the present. Her heart is in her work, and to the end of life’s chapter, while able, may she wield her pen to tell the Story to dear to her heart, in verse and song." Hall, pp. 316-17 http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/n/e/w/newell_lep.htm