Johnson Oatman Jr.

Johnson Oatman Jr. was an American Methodist Episcopal local preacher, businessman, insurance agent, and prolific gospel-hymn writer born near Medford, New Jersey, on April 21, 1856. His father was known as a strong church singer, and Oatman later recalled the influence of hearing him sing. He studied at Herbert’s Academy in Vincentown and the New Jersey Collegiate Institute in Bordentown. After joining the Methodist Episcopal Church at nineteen, he received a license to preach and was later ordained, though he served chiefly as a local preacher rather than as the regular pastor of a congregation.

Oatman worked for years with his father in the mercantile firm Johnson Oatman & Son and later spent about fifteen years in the life-insurance business in Mount Holly. Ill health contributed to his retirement from business around the time he began writing gospel songs intensively in the early 1890s. Contemporary and near-contemporary biographers credit him with several thousand hymn texts; later estimates rise to roughly seven thousand.

Higher Ground was written during the beginning of that songwriting career and set by Charles H. Gabriel. Oatman’s other widely circulated texts include Count Your Blessings, No, Not One!, The Last Mile of the Way, and Deeper Yet. He died in Norman, Oklahoma, on September 25, 1922.