Lizzie Shove Tourjee Estabrook

Lizzie Shove Tourjee Estabrook was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 8, 1858. Her father, Eben Tourjée, was an organist, church-music educator, active Methodist leader, and founder of the New England Conservatory of Music. Growing up in that environment gave Lizzie unusual encouragement to compose at a time when young women's work was often absent from published tune books.

While still a teenager, she wrote the melody later named WELLESLEY, reportedly for a school graduation song. Sources vary slightly on the composition year, but hymn indexes conventionally date it to 1877. When Eben Tourjée helped edit The Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church with Tunes, he included the melody in its 1878 edition and named it for Wellesley College, which Lizzie attended. The tune later became closely associated with Faber's hymn and entered hundreds of hymnals.

She married Franklin Estabrook in 1883 and is consequently identified in sources under Tourjee, Tourjée, or Estabrook. She spent much of her adult life in Auburndale, Massachusetts, teaching music and serving as an organist at Centenary Methodist Church. WELLESLEY is her principal surviving contribution to congregational song. She died in Newton, Massachusetts, on December 28, 1913.