Ebenezer Beesley (1840-1906), director of the Tabernacle Choir throughout the 1880s, was a prolific writer of hymn tunes — eleven of his melodies remain in our hymnal today, including such favorites as “High on the Mountain Top,” “Sing We Now at Parting,” and “God of Our Fathers We Come unto Thee.” He composed music for the Juvenile Instructor, compiled songbooks for the Mutual Improvement Associations and the Sunday Schools, and generally employed his time and talents for the musical betterment of Zion.

This arrangement of “When Christ Was Born in Bethlehem” was published in the 1927 Latter-day Saint Hymns.

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This post is in partial atonement for the “cheap Scot” jokes that appear so often in the Funny Bones compilations.

From 1922 to 1952, the Primary Children’s Hospital was located in a large, remodeled home on North Temple, in Salt Lake City, across from Temple Square, on the block where the Conference Center now sits. It was solely what was then called a “crippled children’s” hospital – the hospital took no acute or contagious disease cases, no traumas, no burns, but only orthopedic cases. They treated crooked spines, club feet, malformed joints, nutritional deficits that resulted in skeletal deformations.

Because the children were generally not sick, but had active minds in bodies that could not run or walk, I think they must have been very aware of the Pioneer Day parades whose route passed just one block away from the hospital. The marching bands and the noise of the crowds must have been near enough to hear, yet too far away to see. I imagine that would have been disappointing to children whose natural inclination would have been to take part, had their limbs allowed them to push through the spectators to places where they could have watched the floats and the horses and the pretty parade royalty throwing candy for the children to scramble after.

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George Hugh Thomas (1860-1948) was born in Wales and emigrated to the U.S. and then to Utah in 1869, one of the first to ride all the way from New York to Utah aboard a train. Called “Dr.” and “Prof.” Thomas, he is found directing choirs and teaching students from Logan to Richfield, taking part in and winning Utah’s Eistedfodds. He was vice president of Utah’s Library and Gymnasium Association, dedicated to improving student facilities in the schools, and a member of the Utah Public Health Association, one of whose primary interests was preventing and curing tuberculosis. He died in Los Angeles at age 88.

His “Christmas Bells” was published in the Juvenile Instructor of December 1912, for teaching in the Sunday Schools that month.

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Mildred Tanner Pettit (1895-1977) is best known as the composer of “I Am a Child of God” and other Primary songs (“Reverently, Quietly” and “Father, I Will Reverent Be”). She is also the composer of “The Light Divine” (no. 305 in the Hymnbook).

This Christmas carol appeared in the Children’s Friend of October, 1930.

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Last year Keepa celebrated Christmas with daily postings of seasonal cover art from past LDS magazines (listed in the Topical Guide under “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”). This year we’re going to post old sheet music for seasonal songs or melodies by LDS composers and/or poets.

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Adapted from Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff; artwork by Douglas Johnson.

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