William Howard Doane was born in Preston, Connecticut on Feb. 3, 1832.
He was educated at Woodstock Academy, where, at the age of fourteen, he directed the school choir. In his final school year, he was converted and joined the Baptist Church at Norwich, Connecticut. After three years' work in his father's cotton manufacturing business, he became associated with J.A. Fay & Co., manufacturers of woodworking machinery.
In 1860 he moved with the woodworking machinery firm to Cincinnati and later became its president. He is credited with over 70 inventions. He spent the remainder of his life in Cincinnati, and was a respected and beloved civic and church leader.
For more than twenty-five years he was superintendent of the Sunday School and choir director at the Mount Auburn Baptist Church of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Music was mostly a hobby, but in spite of his deep involvement in business and politics, he wrote and published more than 2,000 songs and tunes. In spite of this, business was most active in his avocation of composing hymn tunes and editing collections. His more than twenty-two hundred tunes and more than forty collections were widely known and extremely popular.
He frequently worked with Fanny Crosby, providing tunes for her to write words, or simply in working with her to develop hymns.
The following is a list of hymns that William Doane put music to:
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He was a dedicated Christian businessman and generous benefactor; from the proceeds of his most popular songbook, Silver Spray (1867), he donated the pipe organ in the Cincinnati YMCA hall. Later he contributed large sums to Denison University, a Baptist school at Grandville, Ohio, which conferred on him the honorary Mus.D. degree in 1875.
He died in South Orange, New Jersey, on Dec. 24, 1915, leaving a fortune in a trust, which was used for many endeavors. One of the things it built was the Doane Memorial Music Building at Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.
Sources
The photo was from www.hymntime.com
Mary Hammack, L., A Dictionary of Women in Church History, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1997), “Crosby, Frances Jane (Van Alstyne)”; “Hankey, Katherine.”
George C. Lorimer, The Baptists in History (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1893; 2003), 116.
Kenneth W. Osbeck, 101 Hymn Stories (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1982), p. 212.
Kenneth W. Osbeck, 101 More Hymn Stories (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1985), pp. 185, 266.
Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1990), pp. 109, 297, 357.
William J. Reynolds. Companion to Baptist Hymnal. (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1976), page 296
