All hail the smiling rays

Author: Samuel Willard

Willard, Rev. Samuel. (1776 [sic]--1859). He graduated from Harvard College in 1803, served the First Church (Unitarian) in Deerfield, Massachusetts, 1807 to 1829, when he resigned on account of blindness. In 1823 he published a collection of 158 songs, composed by himself, and in 1830 a compilation entitled Sacred Music and Poetry Reconciled, a hymnbook containing 518 hymns by various authors, about 180 of them written by himself. This book was adopted for use in the Third Parish in Hingham, Mass., where Willard was then living, but had little circulation elsewhere, and none of his hymns came into general use. --Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives… Go to person page >