Lavinia E. Brauff was born in Pittsburgh 12 October, 1851. She was blind from infnacy. She was educated at the School for the Blind in Philadelphia. Her first hymn was published in 1894 to the music of H. P. Danks.
Dianne Shapiro, from "The Singers and Their Songs: sketches of living gospel hymn writers" by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (Chicago: The Rodeheaver Company, 1916) Go to person page >
The tune is from the second chorus of Felix Mendelssohn's (PHH 279) Festgesang (Op. 68) for male voices and brass; it was first performed in 1840 at the Gutenberg Festival in Leipzig, a festival celebrating the anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. Mendelssohn's tune is similar…