Please give today to support Hymnary.org during one of only two fund drives we run each year. Each month, Hymnary serves more than 1 million users from around the globe, thanks to the generous support of people like you, and we are so grateful. 

Tax-deductible donations can be made securely online using this link.

Alternatively, you may write a check to CCEL and mail it to:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 3201 Burton SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546

Click here to donate to Hymnary.org I have already donated. Please don't show this to me again this fund drive

Phineas Stowe

Short Name: Phineas Stowe
Full Name: Stowe, Phineas, 1812-1868
Birth Year: 1812
Death Year: 1868

Stowe, Phineas. (Milford, Connecticut, March 30, 1812--November 13, 1868, Somerville, Massachusetts). Baptist. Theological study, c.1831-1835. Pastorates at South Danvers, Mass., 1835-1837; Boston Mass., 1837-c.1857. Worked in Boston as a preacher to seamen. To aid him in his work, he published in 1849, a hymn book entitled Ocean Melodies, with the design, as he said, "to help seamen call up remembrances of home, and lead them to recognize God's power, and hear his voice in the storms that sweep over the deep." He found it difficult, however, to find in collections in use the hymns which he needed, and he not only solicited hymns adapted to the purpose which he had in view, but wrote a large number of hymns himself. Twenty-eight of his hymns are included in Ocean Melodies, and Seamen's Companion(1849), a collection of Hymns and Music, for the use of Bethels, Chaplains of the Navy, and private Devotion of Mariners, among them "The True Friend":

There is a Friend, who's always nigh
to those who on his word rely!

The first edition of Ocean Melodies was prepared by Dr. J.H. Hanaford in 1848. The eighth edition was published in 158. To aid him in his temperance work, Stowe compiled another hymn book, Temperance Meoldies.

--Alan Wingard, DNAH Archives


Suggestions or corrections? Contact us