November 24, 2024
This hero, Fanny Crosby, blind from infancy, wrote between 5,500 and 9,000 hymns. The numbers are not exact because she used many pseudonyms to help preserve her humility.
The only child of John and Mercy Crosby, her father died when she was 6 months old. From 1835 to 1843, she attended the New York Institution for the Blind in New York City.
After her graduation, Fanny remained as a teacher of English grammar, rhetoric, and ancient history, until 1858. She then married a blind man, Alexander Van Alstyne. They had one child who died in infancy.
During these years, she wrote and published poetry, and eventually turned to hymn writing.
Among her most loved pieces include: “Blessed Assurance,” “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “ Rescue the Perishing,” and “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”
At age sixty, she began working in downtown New York rescue missions, living in a modest tenement apartment nearby so she could witness to those trapped in addictions and vices of every kind.
Fanny was physically blind, but had a clear spiritual vision to see the eternal value of service. A hero indeed!
