Horatio+Spafford

Horatio Spafford 
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 * [[image:Horatio Gates Spafford.jpg width="156" height="184"]] || Horatio Gates Spafford (October 20, 1828, [|Troy, New York] – October 16, 1888, [|Jerusalem])[|[1]] was a prominent [|American] [|lawyer], best known for penning the [|Christian] [|hymn] [|It Is Well With My Soul], following a family tragedy in which four of his daughters died.

Son of Gazetteer author Horatio Gates Spafford and Elizabeth Clark Hewitt Spafford, he married [|Anna Larsen] of [|Stavanger], [|Norway] on September 5, 1861, in [|Chicago]. The Spaffords were well known in 1860s Chicago. He was a prominent lawyer, a senior partner in a large and thriving law firm.[|[2]] He and his wife were also prominent supporters and close friends of evangelist [|Dwight L. Moody].[|[3]]

Spafford invested in real estate north of an expanding Chicago in the spring of 1871. When the [|Great Fire of Chicago] reduced the city to ashes in October of that same year, it also destroyed most of Spafford's sizable investment.[|[3]] Two years later, in 1873, Spafford decided his family should take a holiday somewhere in [|Europe], and chose [|England] knowing that his friend[|D. L. Moody] would be preaching there in the fall. He was delayed because of business, so he sent his family ahead: his wife and their four children, daughters eleven-year-old Tanetta, nine-year-old Elizabeth "Bessie", five-year-old Margaret Lee, and two-year-old Anna "Annie".

On November 22, 1873, while crossing the [|Atlantic] on the [|steamship] [|Ville du Havre], their ship was struck by an [|iron] [|sailing vessel][|[4]] and 226 people lost their lives, including all four of Spafford's daughters. Anna was picked up unconscious by the crew of the Lochearn, which itself was in danger of sinking. Fortunately, the Trimountain, a cargo sailing vessel, arrived to save the survivors. Nine days after the shipwreck Anna landed in Cardiff, Wales, and cabled Horatio, "Saved alone. What shall I do…" After receiving Anna's telegram, Horatio immediately left Chicago to bring his wife home. On the Atlantic crossing, the captain of his ship called Horatio to his cabin to tell him that they were passing over the spot where his four daughters had perished. He wrote to Rachel, his wife's half-sister, "On Thursday last we passed over the spot where she went down, in mid-ocean, the waters three miles deep. But I do not think of our dear ones there. They are safe, folded, the dear lambs." Horatio wrote this hymn, still sung today, as he passed over their watery grave.

Following the sinking of the Ville du Havre, Anna gave birth to three more children. On February 11, 1880, their son, Horatio Goertner Spafford, died at the age of four, of [|scarlet fever].[|[8]] Their daughters were Bertha Hedges Spafford (born March 24, 1878) and Grace Spafford (born January 18, 1881).[|[9]] Their Presbyterian church regarded their tragedy as divine punishment. In response, the Spaffords formed their own [|Messianic] sect, dubbed "the Overcomers" by American press.[|[10]] In August 1881, the Spaffords set out for Jerusalem as a party of thirteen adults and three children and set up the [|American Colony]. Colony members, later joined by [|Swedish] Christians, engaged in philanthropic work amongst the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without [|proselytizing] motives—thereby gaining the trust of the local Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities. During and immediately after [|World War I], the American Colony played a critical role in supporting these communities through the great suffering and deprivations of the eastern front by running [|soup kitchens], hospitals, [|orphanages] and other charitable ventures.[|[11]] Four days shy of his 60th birthday, Spafford died on October 16, 1888, of [|malaria], and was buried in [|Mount Zion Cemetery], Jerusalem. || References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Spafford http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/americancolony/amcolony-family.html