Ancel H. Bassett

Rev. Ancel Henry Bassett was born on July 1, 1809 in Sandwich, Massachusetts. He was the youngest child of Elisha and Abigail (Dillingham) Bassett. The Bassetts moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1810, and Ancel’s father died there in 1814. He became a Christian at age twelve and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, but left that denomination because he sympathized with the Methodist Protestant cause. In 1830, he received his license to preach, and in 1840 he was elected as President of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church. Ancel married Priscilla White, the daughter of Rev. Robert and Mary (Johnson) White, on August 24, 1837 in Greenbush, Ohio.

In 1845 Ancel became the editor of the Western Recorder, a Methodist Protestant newspaper that had strong anti-slavery sentiments. In 1860, he was elected as publishing agent for the denomination. At the request of the denomination, he wrote and published A Concise History of the Methodist Protestant Church in 1877. He co-founded the Methodist Protestant Book Concern in Springfield, Ohio, as well as the Mad River Historical Society, where he served as its first president. He earned a Doctor of Divinity degree from Adrian College in Lansing, Michigan. He edited the denomination’s 1860 hymnal, Hymn Book for the Methodist Protestant Church, and then served again on the Hymnal Committee when the denomination ordered a new hymnal in 1867. It was for this hymnal, The Voice of Praise, for which he served as publishing agent, that he wrote the hymn “Midnight Praise”.

Ancel and Priscilla had no children of their own, but when Priscilla’s younger sister Susan died at a young age, they took Priscilla’s niece Caroline to live with them, and was thought of as a very dear uncle. Ancel had a life-long passion for the Gospel, racial equality, history, and writing. He died on August 30, 1886, in Staunton, Ohio, at the home of his niece, Caroline Matthis, and is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Springfield, Ohio.

Rev. Richard J. Wilcox (great-great-grandson of Caroline)