The train known as the Pacific Express (No. 5, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway) pulled out of Erie, Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 29, 1876, headed toward Chicago. Two locomotives, christened \u201cSocrates\u201d and \u201cColumbia,\u201d towed its two passenger cars, three sleeper cars, two baggage cars, two express wagons, a smoker, and the caboose.<\/p>\n
The Pacific Express reached Ashtabula, Ohio, early on that snowy evening. When it pulled out of the Ashtabula station, 159 passengers and crew members were aboard.<\/p>\n
The train had gone only about 100 yards from the station when, at 7:28 p.m., it reached the iron bridge over the Ashtabula River. \u201cSocrates\u201d had just crossed the bridge when bystanders and passengers heard a terrible cracking sound. The bridge collapsed, and \u201cColumbia,\u201d with all eleven following cars, plunged 70 feet into the river. Within moments, the train cars \u2013 all built of wood \u2013 were set afire by the kerosene heaters and lamps in use aboard. Would-be rescuers rushed to the ravine, but could only stand at the edge gazing in horror at the inferno in the water below.<\/p>\n
Among the passengers who escaped from the blaze was Philip Paul Bliss (1838-1876), a Presbyterian \u201cmissionary singer\u201dand author of numerous hymn texts and tunes. Three of his texts are published in our current hymnal: 131, \u201cMore Holiness Give Me\u201d; 235, \u201cShould You Feel Inclined to Censure\u201d; and 335, \u201cBrightly Beams Our Father\u2019s Mercy\u201d (better known as \u201cLet the Lower Lights Be Burning\u201d). When Bliss could not find his wife, Lucy Young Bliss (1841-1876) among the dazed survivors, he turned back into the fire. The young couple were among the 92 killed in the disaster, their bodies among 48 burned so badly that they could not be identified and were buried in a common grave in the Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Ashtabula. The couple left behind two orphaned sons, George and Philip Paul, in Chicago.<\/p>\n
For several years, Bliss had worked in partnership with the great Presbyterian evangelist Dwight L. Moody and as the song-director for revivalist-evangelis Daniel Webster Whittle. In 1874 Bliss had given up his popular \u2013 and extremely lucrative \u2013 work as a popular musician and conductor of singing schools, concert tours, and musical conventions, to become an evangelist himself, signing over his royalties to charities and to missionary work.<\/p>\n
When they heard of the disaster (the worst loss of life in a railway accident in America to that point, and now recalled as \u201cthe Ashtabula Horror\u201d), Whittle and another of Bliss\u2019s friends, musician James McGranahan, went immediately to Ashtabula in an effort to identify the couple\u2019s bodies. Although they could not do that, the pair located Bliss\u2019s trunk. Inside the trunk, which had escaped the inferno virtually unscathed, they found the text to Bliss\u2019s last hymn:<\/p>\n
I will sing of my Redeemer,
\nAnd His wondrous love to me;
\nOn the cruel cross He suffered,
\nFrom the curse to set me free.<\/p>\nSing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
\nWith His blood, He purchased me.
\nOn the cross, He sealed my pardon,
\nPaid the debt, and made me free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI will tell the wondrous story,
\nHow my lost estate to save,
\nIn His boundless love and mercy,
\nHe the ransom freely gave.<\/p>\nSing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
\nWith His blood, He purchased me.
\nOn the cross, He sealed my pardon,
\nPaid the debt, and made me free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI will sing of my Redeemer,
\nAnd His heavenly love to me;
\nHe from death to life hath brought me,
\nSon of God with Him to be.<\/p>\nSing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,
\nWith His blood, He purchased me.
\nOn the cross, He sealed my pardon,
\nPaid the debt, and made me free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\nIn the months following Bliss\u2019s death, McGranahan moved to Chicago to take up Bliss\u2019s work with Whittle. He also set his friend\u2019s last hymn to music, and \u201cMy Redeemer\u201d was first performed in 1877 in one of Whittle\u2019s services. Very soon after that, Thomas Alva Edison recorded the song as performed by George Coles Stebbins, making it one of the first tunes ever recorded.<\/p>\n
In 1893 the music written by McGranahan was performed in Salt Lake City, at the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, sung by Robert Easton, a tenor with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and son-in-law of Brigham Young. But Easton did not sing Bliss\u2019s words that day. He used McGranahan\u2019s music as a setting for Eliza R. Snow\u2019s poem, \u201cOh, My Father.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the several tunes used for \u201cOh, My Father\u201d over the years, McGranahan\u2019s music, written to complete the work of his friend Philip Paul Bliss, remains the most popular, and is the tune published in our hymnal today.<\/p>\n