Fanny Crosby

Fanny Crosby lost her sight as a baby to a doctor's botched treatment, and refused for the rest of her life to be pitied for it — she said the first face she ever saw would be her Savior's. She was educated at the New York Institution for the Blind, taught there for eleven years, addressed Congress, and married a blind musician named Alexander van Alstyne. Publishers came to her with tunes and she supplied the words, often composing a whole text in her head before dictating a line; the count runs past eight thousand, and because no hymnal wanted a dozen entries by one author she scattered them under something like two hundred pen names. 'Blessed Assurance' was written to a tune a friend played for her twice. Royalties made her comfortable and she stayed poor anyway, living near and working in the Bowery rescue missions for decades because that was where she wanted to be.