When she was 5 her mother took her to New York City to see a doctor who told her Fanny would never be able to see. Mrs Crosby would draw word-pictures for her, and in this way Fanny developed a love of nature and a way of describing things in words. But it seems that Fanny was a happy and content little girl even so: she would sit with her mother in the countryside, and ask her to describe the things she could not see. A second sadness was that Mr Crosby died when his baby daughter was only one year old, so Fanny’s mother had the responsibility of caring for her blind child alone. He gave her poultices, which was a tragic mistake – their effect was to remove her sight permanently. She consulted an apothecary (precursors to our modern chemists). When she was only 6 weeks old her mother noticed that her eyes were sore and red-rimmed, and that she cried a good deal and tried to rub them with her little fists. Her Early Blindness ⤒ □įanny Crosby was born in 1820 in the countryside of New York State. Knowledge of Fanny’s songs and their context helps us learn some very useful things about the history of revival songs, and where that tradition has led us today. The second reason is that her particular form of songwriting is part of a long tradition of revival music in America. Fanny was blind, and meeting this challenge shaped her life, her faith and her life’s work. She is interesting for two reasons, the first of which is her unusual life. Fanny Crosby is one of the best-known women hymn writers of the nineteenth century.
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