Frederick Arthur Challinor

Frederick Arthur Challinor was born at Longton, Staffordshire, England, in 1866, the son of a miner. A 1949 hymnal companion records that family poverty sent him to work in a brickyard at ten, then into a coal mine and a china factory. He continued studying harmony in his limited free time, turning an industrial childhood into an unusually determined musical education.

Durham University's surviving music-exercise catalogue documents his Bachelor of Music work in 1897 and Doctor of Music work in 1903. By the middle of the twentieth century he was credited with several cantatas and more than four hundred vocal compositions. The best-known part of that large output is STORIES OF JESUS, composed specifically for Parker's text in connection with a National Sunday School Union competition. The 1905 Sunday School Hymnary prints the tune with the six-stanza text and dates the music to 1904; many later hymn references instead use 1903, probably reflecting the competition or composition date before publication. Challinor died in 1952. His denominational membership is not securely established by the principal hymnological and archival sources and is therefore left unspecified.