J. 1703 H.W.F.
Silliman, Rev. Vincent Brown, D.D., Hudson, Wisconsin, June 29, 1894—still living. He graduated from Meadville Theological School in 1920 and from the University of Minnesota in 1925. He has served Unitarian churches in Buffalo, New York; Portland, Maine; Hollis, New York; and Chicago, Illinois. He was a member of the committee which edited The Beacon Song and Service Book for Children and Young People, 1935, and edited We Sing of Life, 1955, an unusual collection of songs for children and young people, with a strong ethical emphasis, some set to familiar hymn tunes, others to interesting folk music. Mr. Silliman contributed the words of several songs. One of them, beginning,
Morning, so fair to see,
is also included in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, set to St. Elizabeth (Crusader’s Hymn).
H.W.F.
Spencer, Mrs. Anna Garlin, (wife of Rev. William H. Spencer), Attleboro, Massachusetts, April 17, 1851—February 12, 1931, New York. She was ordained as a Unitarian minister, and was a lecturer and author of books on social problems. In 1896 in her “Orders of Service for Public Worship” she included her song entitled “The Marching Song of the Workers,” beginning,
Hail the hero workers of the mighty past,
set to St. Gertrude. It was included in Hymns of the United Church, 1924, in Songs of Work and Worship, and in Hymns of the Spirit, 1937.
H.W.F.
Sprague, Charles, Boston, Massachusetts, October 22, 1791—January 22, 1875, Boston. A Unitarian layman. Although a business man without a college education he wrote much verse which brought him a considerable reputation and requests for poems to celebrate special occasions. One of them was read before the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in Cambridge in 1829, and was re-published, with minor alterations, a few years later in Calcutta by a British officer, as his own work. A collection of his poems was published in 1841, and an enlarged edition in 1850. A number of his shorter poems are given in Putnam’s Singers and Songs, and a hymn attributed to “C. Sprague” is included in Hedge and Huntington’s Hymns for the Church of Christ, 1853, beginning