Carrie Ellis Breck

Carrie Ellis Breck was an American poet and gospel-hymn writer whose work circulated widely through religious periodicals and songbooks around the turn of the twentieth century. Born in Vermont in 1855, she moved with her family to Vineland, New Jersey, while still a child. She married Frank A. Breck in 1884, raised a family, and later moved to Portland, Oregon. Contemporary biographical material describes a home shaped by regular Bible reading and prayer, and local records associate the Breck family with First Presbyterian Church in Vineland.

Breck wrote both prose and verse for religious and household publications. Charles H. Gabriel's 1916 collection The Singers and Their Songs credited her with roughly fourteen to fifteen hundred hymns, and Hymnary preserves hundreds of her texts. She frequently supplied words to gospel-song composers rather than composing music herself.

Her representative works include Nailed to the Cross, When Love Shines In, and the hymn represented in this record. Breck's writing typically uses direct devotional language, personal testimony, assurance, evangelistic appeal, and hope in Christ. She died in Portland in 1934. Her career illustrates the substantial contribution of women writers to American gospel hymnody even when their names were sometimes printed under married forms such as Mrs. Frank A. Breck.