When the most recent edition of the Latter-day Saint hymnal was introduced in 1985, one of the new features distinguishing it from prior editions was the inclusion of birth and death dates for authors and composers. For many hymns, however, no author or composer name could be found, and the first known publication source or date is listed instead. In some instances, when the name of the author or composer is known, but no other biographical information is extant, the year of the hymn’s first publication is printed beside the author or composer name. Such is the case with “Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd” (Hymn no. 221), where the birth of author Mary B. Wingate is listed as 1899, which is the year the hymn was first published, and not the year Wingate was born.
For much of the past century, information concerning Wingate’s life has been scarce. In fact, her identity remained a mystery until 2005, when a small collection of her verse was discovered. This pamphlet, entitled Grain From Life’s Harvest, was published in 1914, and listed her residence as Pittsfield, Maine. An inquiry to the Pittsfield Historical Society led to the discovery that prior to Pittsfield, Wingate had lived in East Corinth, Maine. The Corinth Historical Society was then contacted, and with the help of volunteer James R. Wilson, birth and death dates for Wingate were soon located in a search of the cemetery records for Rich Cemetery in nearby Charleston, Maine. A short biographical sketch of Wingate was then pieced together from data gleaned from various census and other available records, and Mr. Wilson furnished this information, along with the portrait of Wingate printed on the inside of Grain From Life’s Harvest, to The Cyber Hymnal, a popular hymn website. This biographical information has since been copied onto many other websites, including ChurchofJesusChrist.org, the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the birth and death dates and a photograph of Wingate are also included in the second edition of Karen Lynn Davidson’s Our Latter-day Hymns, the official Latter-day Saint hymnal companion. Recently, however, further information has been uncovered which helps to fill in some of the missing gaps in Wingate’s biography.
Mary B. Wingate was the daughter of Mary Ann Boden and Amos Rich and was born August 6, 1845, in Charleston, Maine. Hymns had always been an important part of Wingate’s life, even as a young girl. Her father had a nice singing voice, and would often sing hymns around the house. Mary began to write poetry and hymns at an early age, and would often “rewrite, or revise, poems and hymns, hardly knowing why, only that they did not ‘sound right, somehow.’” (Missionary Helper.) Although she would occasionally compose poems for special events, or for her friends, Mary did not attempt publication until she was nearly thirty years old, and her first public efforts were hidden under a pseudonym.
Mary was raised on a farm, where opportunities for education were limited. She attended the district school near her home town, followed by two terms at an academy, but the majority of her education was received at home through her own reading and study. With determination and hard work she earned her teaching license, and she taught school for several years in her home state of Maine, and later in Missouri.
On December 29, 1869, in Charleston, Maine, she married Ebenezer E. Hebberd, a shoe cutter from Worcester, Massachussetts. He was “a man of superior mind and refined tastes, who helped cultivate his wife’s love for poetry by reciting from his favorite authors at their own fireside.” (Missionary Helper.) But this marriage was short-lived; Eben Hebberd passed away on July 7, 1874, at the age of forty-five.
Mary was remarried four years later to Ezra Kellogg Wingate, a farmer from East Corinth, Maine. They were married in Charleston, Mrs. Wingate’s hometown, on December 31, 1878, by the Reverend Thomas Kenney, and afterwards went to live at Mr. Wingate’s home in East Corinth. In addition to a son from her previous marriage, Harry Irving Hebberd, born September 22, 1872, Mary helped raised Ezra’s two small children: Herbert Lemuel Wingate, born June 2, 1873, and Dora Maria Wingate, born May 29, 1876. Another son, Walter Wilbert Wingate, was born on December 8, 1884.
“As her cares and duties increased, her desire to write increased also, and she often felt the ‘apron strings of duty’ drawing one way and inclination another,” wrote May B. Kneeland of Wingate in 1900, in the Missionary Helper. “When editors and literary people complimented her work, she was encouraged to persevere, and so little by little, amid the numerous duties of wife, mother, and housekeeper, her writing has been done, much of it in the early morning before the family were astir. Pencil and paper were kept close at hand to catch the thoughts constantly flitting through her brain…[she] composes very rapidly, laying the result aside for a few days, then revising for the press.” (Missionary Helper.)
Wingate’s eldest son, Harry Irving, was an inspiration to her, but died in his freshman year at Bates College on January 25, 1892, after contracting typhoid fever. “He encouraged and aided his mother in her literary work, and expressed a desire in his last sickness that she would devote herself more and more to her chosen work.” (Missionary Helper.)
Wingate received help and encouragement early in her writing career from Mary R. Wade, president of the Maine Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society, and Wade’s daughter, Nellie Wade Whitcomb, editor of the Missionary Helper. She also eagerly sought criticism from Professor Alfred Williams Anthony of Bates College, and George Colby Chase, who served as president of Bates College from 1894 to 1919, both of whom gave her much encouragement in her literary work. “But feeling that she had no right to the time of such busy people, sorely as she felt her need, she plodded along by herself, without the stimulus such associations would have given her.” (Missionary Helper.)
The course of Wingate’s life was changed in 1894, when she attended a religious conference in Northfield, Massachusetts. Upon hearing a hymn performed by revivalist Ira Sankey during this conference, Wingate felt inspired to attempt writing hymns, and after she returned home she sent Mr. Sankey a poem. “She received a very pleasant letter in reply, saying he was persuaded she would write good hymns and asking her to write him ‘a simple Gospel hymn, such as Mr. Moody would give out from the platform.’” (Missionary Helper.) This was the beginning of her career as a well-known hymnist, and she soon began sending her work with some success to other composers.
In 1900, Wingate’s husband Ezra gave up farming and moved his family to Pittsfield, Maine, approximately thirty miles southwest of East Corinth. He worked for many years as a janitor at the Lancey Street Grammar School in Pittsfield, and “by his kindly ways had made many friends, especially among the school children.” (Pittsfield Advertiser, May 20, 1920). His death came unexpectedly, on May 14, 1920, after a brief illness. He was eighty years old. Tragedy struck again one year later when Wingate’s son Walter was killed in an automobile accident, on July 31, 1921.
“Through all her sadness she was always calm and took her strong belief in her Saviour’s will as just,” according to an obituary published one month after Wingate’s death in the Pittsfield Advertiser. “[H]er remarkable courage and faith were an inspiration to all who knew her.” (Pittsfield Advertiser, June 15, 1933.)
In 1923, beset with illness, Wingate sold her property in Pittsfield and went to live with her step-daughter Dora Clement in Three Rivers, Massachusetts. When the family relocated to nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, a few years later, Wingate came with them. She died on May 12, 1933, in Springfield, at the home of her step-daughter. Wingate was buried beside her first husband at Rich Cemetery (also known as Lord Cemetery), in Charleston, Maine.
Mary Wingate was a Free Will Baptist, and served as a member of the New Era Auxiliary Society of the Free Baptist Church. She was also active in the W. C. T. U., and was a member of the Maine Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society, and the Corinthian Club of East Corinth, “a Chautauqua society for the joint study of current history and literature.” (Chautauquan.)
She was the author of dozens of poems and hymns, some of which were contributed to the Christian Herald, the Pittsfield Advertiser, and other newspapers and magazines. She published at least two volumes of poetry, including Grain From Life’s Harvest (1914). While most of the poems and hymns written by Mary B. Wingate are now forgotten, the hymn “Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd” is still found in the current Latter-day Saint hymnal, and her poem “Washington” is occasionally republished.
Notes:
*“Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd” was first published in Wm. J. Kirkpatrick, J. L. Hall, and H. L. Gilmour, Gospel Praises for use in Meetings of Christian Worship (Philadelphia: Hall Mack Co., 1899).
*The “B.” in Mary B. Wingate’s name most likely stands for Boden, her mother’s maiden name.
*Ebenezer Hebberd, Mary Wingate’s first husband, was originally married to Mary’s sister, Eleanor Rich, on April 22, 1858. Eleanor passed away on December 10, 1865, at the age of twenty-eight, in Abbington, Massachusetts, after contracting typhoid fever. Mary was married to Eben Hebberd four years later.
*Grain From Life’s Harvest is the only collection of Wingate’s poetry that has been found, but another book of poetry is mentioned in the January 20, 1910 issue of the Pittsfield Advertiser: “The Sunshine Society held a pleasant meeting….Mrs. Stevens read some excellent selections from the collection of poems recently published by Mrs. Mary B. Wingate of Pittsfield.”
(“Correspondence news from Nearby Towns,” Pittsfield Advertiser, January 20, 1910, 7.)
This book has never been found, and it is not known if this was Wingate’s first published collection of poetry. By December 1913, Wingate was preparing another collection of poems, to be titled Original Poems No. 2, which implies her earlier collection was probably called Original Poems: “Mrs. Mary B. Wingate is having published a new book of poems called Original Poems No. 2, which will contain many poems which have proved special favorites and many which are new and appear for the first time. This book is daily expected from the press, and no doubt will receive a liberal patronage.” (“All the News Around Town,” Pittsfield Advertiser, December 18, 1913, 5.)
Grain From Life’s Harvest was published nearly a year later, in October 1914, and it is not known if this is a different publication than Original Poems No. 2, or if the publication of the book was delayed and the title changed. The only known copy of Grain From Life’s Harvest is in my possession.
Sources:
“New Circles,” Chautauquan 26, No. 6 (March 1898): 683
Wm. J. Kirkpatrick, J. L. Hall, and H. L. Gilmour, Gospel Praises for use in Meetings of Christian Worship (Philadelphia: Hall Mack Co., 1899), 100.
May B. Kneeland, “Some of Our Well-Known Writers,” Missionary Helper 23, no. 7 (July 1900): 201-203.
“Wedding Anniversary,” Pittsfield Advertiser, January 7, 1909, 8.
Mary B. Wingate, Grain From Life’s Harvest (Pittsfield, Maine: The Advertiser Printery, 1914)
“Ezra K. Wingate,” Pittsfield Advertiser, May 20, 1920, [1]
“Obituary” (Ezra K. Wingate), Pittsfield Advertiser, June 3, 1920, [1].
“Pittsfield Citizen Crushed to Death,” Pittsfield Advertiser, August 4, 1921, [1].
“Local Happenings,” Pittsfield Advertiser, October 18, 1923, 5.
“Letter from Mrs. Wingate,” Pittsfield Advertiser, November 29, 1923, 4.
“Obituary” (Mrs. Mary B. Wingate), Springfield (Mass.) Union, May 13, 1933, 8.
“Mrs. Mary B. Wingate,” Pittsfield Advertiser, June 15, 1933, 8.
Latter-day Saint Hymnology 