William B. Tappan

TAPPAN, William Bingham. b. Beverley, Massachusetts, 29 October 1794; d. West Needham, Mass., 18 June 1849. He was apprenticed to a clockmaker in Boston in 1810, moving to Philadelphia in 1815. He was appointed Superintendent of the American Sunday School Union in 1822, and licensed as a preacher in the Congregational Church in 1840. He began writing hymns sometime before 1818, and was encouraged by the reception of a hymn published in the Franklin Gazette (1818), beginning ‘There is an hour of peaceful rest’*. For this hymn Frederick Charles Maker* wrote the tune REST, later used for ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’*. Tappan published several books of poetry, beginning with New England...