Elvina M. Hall

Elvina Mable Reynolds Hall, later Elvina Hall Myers, was an American Methodist laywoman and hymn writer born in Alexandria, Virginia. Modern hymn authority records generally give her dates as 1820–1889, although some older biographical notices gave an earlier birth year. She married Richard Hall and was widowed in 1859; in 1885 she married Methodist minister Thomas Myers. For many years she was associated with Monument Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hall’s lasting contribution to hymnody came in the spring of 1865. A near-contemporary account published by Edwin McKean Long in 1876 records that, while the congregation was at prayer, she wrote her hymn on the flyleaf of “The New Lute of Zion.” John Julian later preserved the same basic account and located the event in the choir of a Methodist Episcopal church in Baltimore. The text was subsequently matched with music by fellow Monument Street member John T. Grape and first published in 1868.

Hall is not known for a large surviving body of hymns comparable to many professional hymn writers of her century. Her historical significance rests chiefly on this one text, whose language of grace, cleansing, redemption, and dependence on Christ entered hundreds of Protestant hymnals.