William Ernest Blandy
1848 - 1915
Methodist Episcopal; formerly Salvation Army and Primitive Methodist
Biography
William Ernest Blandy was an English-born evangelist and minister whose name appears in sources as William E. Blandy, Ernest W. Blandy, E. W. Blandy, and occasionally the misspelling Blandly. Born in England in 1848, he served in the Christian Mission and early Salvation Army during the 1870s, with appointments including Barking, Hartlepool, Bethnal Green, and South Shields. He married fellow evangelist Eliza Amelia Eade in 1878.
Blandy emigrated to the United States in 1884 and became a Salvation Army officer, eventually holding the rank of major and exercising oversight in New York and surrounding districts. His later ministry crossed denominational lines. He served the Primitive Methodist Church, the Methodist Protestant Church, and finally the Methodist Episcopal Church, including appointments connected with Queens, Binghamton, northeastern Pennsylvania, and the Wyoming Conference.
Where He Leads Me is the work for which Blandy is chiefly remembered, but archival evidence shows that he wrote other verse as early as 1878. The familiar story that he composed the hymn after rejecting a comfortable pastorate for work in New York’s slums is not documented in sources from the hymn’s earliest period. His actual career did repeatedly move between established congregations and evangelistic or mission work, which may have contributed to the later tradition. Blandy died at Barton, New York, on August 18, 1915.
Blandy emigrated to the United States in 1884 and became a Salvation Army officer, eventually holding the rank of major and exercising oversight in New York and surrounding districts. His later ministry crossed denominational lines. He served the Primitive Methodist Church, the Methodist Protestant Church, and finally the Methodist Episcopal Church, including appointments connected with Queens, Binghamton, northeastern Pennsylvania, and the Wyoming Conference.
Where He Leads Me is the work for which Blandy is chiefly remembered, but archival evidence shows that he wrote other verse as early as 1878. The familiar story that he composed the hymn after rejecting a comfortable pastorate for work in New York’s slums is not documented in sources from the hymn’s earliest period. His actual career did repeatedly move between established congregations and evangelistic or mission work, which may have contributed to the later tradition. Blandy died at Barton, New York, on August 18, 1915.
Hymns by William Ernest Blandy
Where He Leads Me
Role: Lyricist