Henry Ware Jr.

Henry Ware Jr. was an American Unitarian minister, theologian, educator, and writer born in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1794. The son of Harvard divinity professor Henry Ware Sr., he graduated from Harvard in 1812 and was ordained pastor of Boston's Second Church in 1817. Declining health led the congregation to appoint Ralph Waldo Emerson as his colleague in 1829. Ware then joined Harvard Divinity School, where he served as Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care from 1829 until 1842. His best-known prose work, On the Formation of the Christian Character, appeared in 1831, and his 1838 sermon The Personality of the Deity responded to theological questions raised by Emerson's Divinity School Address.

Ware is traditionally credited with “Happy the Home When God Is There,” and that attribution is used by many modern hymnals and indexes. It is not securely demonstrated by the earliest evidence, however. Ware died in 1843, while the earliest located printing appeared in 1846 under the title “The Happy Home” and was signed “Mrs. W.” No manuscript or authorial publication establishing Ware's authorship has been located. His name therefore remains the conventional attribution rather than an undisputed identification, and the hymn's exact composition date is unknown.