Rufus Henry McDaniel

Rufus Henry McDaniel (1850–1940) was an American minister and gospel-hymn writer from Ohio. Born near Ripley in Brown County, he was educated in the Bentonville area and at Parker’s Academy in Clermont County. He received a license to preach at nineteen and was ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1873. His ministry included pastorates in southern Ohio, including smaller communities as well as Cincinnati, and he later lived in Dayton.

McDaniel began writing hymns in the nineteenth century and ultimately produced more than one hundred texts. His youngest son, Herschel, died in 1913. Hymnological sources connect that bereavement with McDaniel’s writing of Since Jesus Came into My Heart in 1914, though the surviving accounts are retrospective rather than a detailed contemporary composition diary. Charles H. Gabriel supplied the tune, and the song appeared in 1914 collections before becoming closely associated with evangelistic campaigns led by Billy Sunday and Homer Rodeheaver. McDaniel’s own comments, preserved in Gabriel’s 1916 biographical volume, show that he viewed hymn writing as a ministry of encouragement. Of his many texts, Since Jesus Came into My Heart became by far his most enduring contribution to congregational gospel song.