Horatio Spafford

Horatio Gates Spafford (October 20, 1828, Troy, New York – October 16, 1888, Jerusalem) was a prominent American lawyer and Presbyterian church elder.He is best known for penning the Christian hymn It Is Well With My Soul following a family tragedy in which his four daughters died aboard the S.S. Ville du Havre on a transatlantic voyage.

Spafford was the son of Gazetteer author Horatio Gates Spafford and Elizabeth Clark Hewitt Spafford.

On September 5, 1861 he married Anna Larsen of Stavanger, Norway in Chicago. Spafford was a lawyer and a senior partner in a large law firm. The Spaffords were supporters and friends of evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Spafford invested in real estate north of Chicago in the spring of 1871. In October 1871, the Great Fire of Chicago reduced the city to ashes, destroying most of Spafford's investment.

The wreck of the Ville du Havre

Two years after the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire the family planned a trip to Europe. Late business demands (zoning issues arising from the Fire) kept Spafford from joining his wife and four daughters on a family vacation in England where his friend D. L. Moody would be preaching.

On November 22, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic on the steamship Ville du Havre, the ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel killing 226 people, including all of Spafford's daughters. His wife, Anna, survived the tragedy. Upon arriving in England, she sent a telegram to Spafford that read "Saved alone." As Spafford sailed to England to join his wife, he wrote "It Is Well with My Soul."

It Is Well with My Soul lyrics

The original manuscript has only four verses, but Spafford's daughter, Bertha Spafford Vester, who was born after the tragedy, said an additional verse was later added and the last line of the original song was modified. The music, written by Philip Bliss, was named after the ship on which Spafford's daughters died, Ville du Havre.

Later years

Following the sinking of the Ville du Havre, Anna gave birth to three children, Horatio Goertner, (1877), Bertha Hedges (March 24, 1878) and Grace (January 18, 1881). On February 11, 1880, Horatio died of scarlet fever at age three.This final tragedy, after a decade of financial loss and personal grief accompanied by a lack of support from their church community, began Horatio's philosophical move away from material success towards a lifelong spiritual pilgrimage.Anna and Horatio Spafford soon left the Presbyterian congregation Horatio had helped build and hosted prayer meetings in their home. Their Messianic sect was dubbed "the Overcomers" by the American press.

In August 1881, the Spaffords went to Jerusalem as a party of 13 adults and three children to set up an American Colony. Colony members, joined by Swedish Christians, engaged in philanthropic work among the people of Jerusalem regardless of their religious affiliation and without proselytizing motives, gaining the trust of the local Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities.

In Jerusalem, Horatio and Anna Spafford adopted a teenager, Jacob Eliahu (1864–1932), who was born in Ramallah into a Turkish Jewish family. As a schoolboy, Jacob Spafford discovered the Siloam inscription.

Spafford died of malaria on October 16, 1888 and was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem.

During and after World War I, the American Colony supported the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities of Jerusalem at the Eastern front and during the Armenian and Assyrian Genocides by hosting soup kitchens, hospitals, and orphanages.