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1805-1848

“Nearer My God to Thee”

Her mother died when Sarah was five, and she was raised by her father, a journalist/politician in Harlow, England. In 1834, she married William Adams, a railway engineer. When she aspired to be an actress, God had other plans. Though she played Lady Macbeth in 1837, her career was cut short by poor health. Writing then became the outlet for her creative impulses. Her sister Eliza was musically talented and in Eliza’s later years wrote music for some of Sarah’s hymns. Together, they wrote popular political and protest songs concerning women’s rights, suffrage, and civil and religious liberty.

Her works also included many magazine articles, “Vivia Perpetua”, a poem about Perpetua, a Christian martyr in Carthage in 203 A.D. whose story of spiritual and intellectual struggle was much like her own. She also wrote a children’s catechism, and thirteen entries in Hymns and Anthems published in 1841. Most of her hymns were written before association with the Monthly Repository, a radical magazine. Adams attended South Place Unitarian Church in Finsbury, London, but became a Baptist in her later life.

One day in 1841, her pastor visited. He was compiling a hymnbook and told her he was frustrated that he couldn’t find a hymn to go along with the upcoming Sunday sermon of Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28. She wrote “Nearer My God to Thee” in time for his sermon. It has been reported, but not confirmed, that her childhood friend, Robert Browning, indirectly inspired the hymn. Browning’s influence revived her Christian faith when her poor health took her to a spiritual low point. This was the only hymn written in her later years. It was President McKinley’s favorite. He recited it as he lay dying. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders sang it when they buried their comrades. Perhaps it is most famous as the song reportedly played as the Titanic sank.