Mary Lee Demarest

Demarest, Mary, née Lee, b. at Corton Falls, New York, in 1838, married to Mr. Demarest, and died at Pasadena, California, in 1887. The story of her poem, "I am far frae my hame," which is given as a Sacred Song by I. D. Sankey in his Sacred Songs & Solos, was written in 1861, and printed in The New York Observer. Its history, too long for quotation here, is given in Mr. Sankey's My Life and Sacred Songs, 1906, pp. 161-2.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)