Annie Sherwood Hawks

Annie Sherwood Hawks was an American poet and hymn writer born in Hoosick, New York, in 1835; some later reference works note uncertainty over whether the birth year was 1835 or 1836. She showed an early interest in poetry, publishing verse while still young. After marrying Charles Hial Hawks, she moved with her family to Brooklyn, where she became associated with Hanson Place Baptist Church. Her pastor, Robert Lowry, encouraged her to write hymns, and she eventually produced hundreds of texts, many for Sunday school use.

Hawks wrote “I Need Thee Every Hour” in 1872 during an ordinary period of household life rather than in response to a crisis. In a later recollection she said the idea arose from a strong sense of Christ’s nearness and from wondering how anyone could live without him in either joy or pain. Lowry supplied the refrain and composed the tune NEED.

Hawks later explained that only after the death of her husband in 1888 did she understand the hymn’s language of need through deep personal sorrow. She spent her later years with her daughter and died in Bennington, Vermont, on January 3, 1918.