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R. E. Winsett

1876 - 1952 Composer of "[While trav'ling through this vale of tears]" in Songs of Perennial Glory Robert Emmett Winsett (January 15, 1876 — June 26, 1952 (aged 76) was an American composer and publisher of Gospel music. Winsett was born in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, and graduated from the Bowman Normal School of Music in 1899. He founded his own publishing company in 1903, and his first publication, Winsett's Favorite Songs, quickly became popular among the Baptist and Pentecostal churches of the American South. Pentecostal Power followed in 1907; that year Winsett completed postgraduate work at a conservatory. He married Birdie Harris in 1908, and had three sons and two daughters with her. He settled in Fort Smith, Arkansas, continuing to compose gospel songs, of which he would write over 1,000 in total. He became a minister in 1923, and was affiliated with the Church of God (Seventh Day). Birdie Harris died late in the 1920s, and shortly thereafter Winsett moved back to Tennessee. He founded a new company in Chattanooga, and published more shape note music books. He remarried, to Mary Ruth Edmonton, in 1930, and had three further children. Winsett's final publication, Best of All (1951), sold over 1 million copies, and in total his books sold over ten million copies. His song "Jesus Is Coming Soon" won a Dove Award for Gospel Song of the Year at the 1969 awards. He has been inducted into the Southern Gospel Museum and Hall of Fame. --www.wikipedia.org

Powell G. Fithian

b. 1861 Composer of "[While trav'ling thro' this vale of tears]" in Fairer than Day (Enlarged Edition) Born: April 30, 1861, Greenwich Township (now Gibbstown), New Jersey. Fithian was music director for the public schools in Camden, New Jersey. He and his wife Julia were both listed in the 1910 and 1920 census, but his wife appears alone in the 1930 census. Powell’s works include: Songs of the Mercy Seat, with George Hugg (Methodist Episcopal Book Room, 1899) Songs for Work and Worship, with Howard Entwisle & Adam Geibel (Dayton, Ohio: Lorenz & Company, 1900) Exalted Praise, with Howard Entwisle (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: MacCalla & Company, 1901) Heavenly Sunlight, with Howard Entwisle & Adam Geibel (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: MacCalla & Company, 1902) The Fithian Music Primer (New York: American Book Company, 1915) --www.hymntime.com/tch/

Johnson Oatman, Jr.

1856 - 1922 Person Name: Rev. Johnson Oatman, Jr. Author of "My Gaze Is Fixed On Jesus" in Fairer than Day (Enlarged Edition) Johnson Oatman, Jr., son of Johnson and Rachel Ann Oatman, was born near Medford, N. J., April 21, 1856. His father was an excellent singer, and it always delighted the son to sit by his side and hear him sing the songs of the church. Outside of the usual time spent in the public schools, Mr. Oatman received his education at Herbert's Academy, Princetown, N. J., and the New Jersey Collegiate Institute, Bordentown, N. J. At the age of nineteen he joined the M.E. Church, and a few years later he was granted a license to preach the Gospel, and still later he was regularly ordained by Bishop Merrill. However, Mr. Oatman only serves as a local preacher. For many years he was engaged with his father in the mercantile business at Lumberton, N. J., under the firm name of Johnson Oatman & Son. Since the death of his father, he has for the past fifteen years been in the life insurance business, having charge of the business of one of the great companies in Mt. Holly, N. J., where he resides. He has written over three thousand hymns, and no gospel song book is considered as being complete unless it contains some of his hymns. In 1878 he married Wilhelmina Reid, of Lumberton, N.J. and had three children, Rachel, Miriam, and Percy. Excerpted from Biography of Gospel Song and Hymn Writers by Jacob Henry Hall; Fleming H. Revell, Co. 1914