Harriet Eugenia Peck Buell

Harriet Eugenia Peck Buell, commonly indexed as Hattie E. Buell, was an American poet and hymn writer born in Cazenovia, New York, in 1834. She lived for many years in Manlius, New York, where later biographical accounts identify her with the local Methodist church, and she contributed poetry to the Northern Christian Advocate, the Syracuse-based Methodist periodical. She married Willard Barnes Buell and had two sons. In 1898 she moved to Washington, D.C., while retaining connections with New York, including a summer residence at Thousand Island Park.

Buell's lasting place in hymnody rests chiefly on A Child of the King. The text is generally dated to 1877 and was first circulated as a poem before John Bunnell Sumner supplied the musical setting that became standard. Unlike professional gospel-song writers who produced large published catalogs, Buell appears principally in hymnological sources through this text and her periodical poetry.

She died in Washington, D.C., in 1910. The hymn's continuing circulation has kept her name before congregations in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Reformed, Adventist, African American, Salvation Army, and evangelical hymnals.