Sweet hour of prayer

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer. W.W. Walford, 19th century, dates unknown; or William Walford (1772-1850).  This famous hymn was first published in The New York Observer, 13 September 1845. The authorship is in some doubt (see the Walford entry). The first appearance in a hymnal was in Conference Hymns, a new collection of hymns, designed especially for use in Conference and prayer Meetings and family worship (1849), edited by John Dowling (1807-1878) (Young, 1993, p. 611). In that hymnal it was confidently attributed to ‘Walford, the Blind Preacher’. A further publication was identified by William J. Reynolds* in Church Melodies (1858), edited by Thomas Hastings* and Robert...