Phoebe Palmer Knapp

Phoebe Palmer Knapp was an American composer, organist, and philanthropist born in New York City in 1839. She was the daughter of Walter C. Palmer and Phoebe Worrall Palmer, prominent Methodist holiness leaders whose home was closely connected with prayer meetings, religious publishing, and sacred song. At sixteen she married Joseph Fairchild Knapp, a businessman later associated with the founding and leadership of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The Knapps were active in Methodist Sunday-school and church life.

Knapp showed musical ability from an early age and composed hundreds of gospel tunes and sacred pieces. Hymnary.org credits her with more than five hundred gospel songs and identifies ASSURANCE as her best-known tune; another enduring work associated with her is Open the Gates of the Temple. Her social position after her husband’s financial success also enabled substantial charitable giving.

In 1873 Knapp played a newly composed melody for her friend Fanny Crosby and asked for a text suitable to it. Crosby supplied the hymn that became Blessed Assurance. The resulting text-and-tune partnership is unusually clear historically: the melody came first, Crosby fitted words to it, and both works date from 1873.