“Come, Come, Ye Saints,” written more than one hundred seventy-five years ago, has long been a favorite hymn of the Latter-day Saints. But during the past half century it has become popular with Christians of other faiths as well, and can now be found in hymnals used by the Baptists, the Seventh Day Adventists, and other Christian denominations (albeit in heavily modified form). “Come, Come, Ye Saints” is perhaps the only Latter-day Saint hymn to be borrowed extensively by the outside Christian world. And yet, more than any other hymn, “Come, Come, Ye Saints” is indelibly linked with the Mormon pioneers and their journey across the plains. Indeed, the hymn was written during this arduous trek.
The text’s author William Clayton was among the first group of Latter-day Saint pioneers to travel to the Salt Lake Valley. At the time, his wife Diantha was eight months pregnant and unable to make the journey with her husband, so she remained behind at Nauvoo, Illinois. On the morning of April 15, 1846, while the pioneer company was resting at Locust Creek, Iowa, Clayton received the news that Diantha had given birth to a son, and recorded the following in his journal:
This morning Ellen Kimball came to me and wishes me much joy. She said Diantha has a son. I told her I was afraid it was not so, but she said Brother Pond had received a letter. I went over to Pond’s and he read that she had a fine fat boy on the 30th ult., but she was very sick with ague and mumps. Truly I feel to rejoice at this intelligence but feel sorry to hear of her sickness…In the evening the band played…We had a very pleasant time playing and singing until about twelve o’clock and drank health to my son. We named him William Adriel Benoni Clayton . . .This morning I composed a new song—“All is well.”I feel to thank my heavenly father for my boy and pray that he will spare and preserve his life and that of his mother and so order it so that we may soon meet again.” [2]
Clayton adapted his hymn to to fit the music of a popular camp-meeting hymn, “What’s this that steals,” the first stanza of which reads:
What’s this that steals, that steals upon my frame—
Is it Death, is it Death?
That soon will quench, will quench this vital flame—
Is it Death, is it Death?
If this be death, I soon shall be
From every pain and sorrow free:
I shall the King of Glory see—
All is well! all is well! [3]
This hymn was composed by Primitive Methodist preacher Richard Jukes (1804-1867), [4] and is said to have been written upon hearing the last words of Bishop William McKendree, the fourth bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who died on March 5, 1835, near Nashville, Tennessee. [5]
Aside from its irregular meter, Clayton’s text bears no similarities to Jukes’ hymn, although he did borrow its final phrase “All is well! all is well!”
The words of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” were first published in broadside form in 1848, [6] and were included in the Latter-day Saint hymnal for the first time in 1851. Because the earliest church hymnals were words only, the tune ALL IS WELL did not appear in a Latter-day Saint collection until 1887, when it was published with Clayton’s words in Ebeneezer Beesley’s Improvement Association Song Book.
ALL IS WELL is listed in the current Latter-day Saint hymnal as an English folk song, but this has not yet been proven. The earliest printings found thus far are American. Latter-day Saint author George Pyper claimed this tune was “derived from the [English] folk song ‘Good Morning, Gossip Joan,’ which still persists in Virginia oral tradition as ‘Good Morning, Neighbor Jones.’” Unfortunately, Pyper offered no further evidence in support of this claim. [7]
David Russell Hamrick, who is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is one of the few researchers to follow up on Pyper’s claims. On “David’s Hymn Blog,” Hamrick examined the connection between “Good Morning, Gossip Joan” and “All Is Well” and noted that while the two melodies do share a resemblance in five measures near the middle of each song, the two melodies are otherwise entirely distinct. [8] These same five measures also appear in the English song “Begone Dull Care,” from which “Gossip Joan” was reportedly adapted. (“Begone Dull Care” is said to have been derived from “The Queen’s Jig,” but this earlier tune does not include the five aforementioned measures.”) [9]
ALL IS WELL could have been derived from either “Gossip Joan” or “Begone Dull Care,” or possibly neither. “One fascinating aspect of the ‘All Is Well’ tune,” notes Latter-day Saint musicologist Wade Kotter, “is that the beginning of the chorus is very similar to the beginning of the chorus in several other American and British folk tunes with a similar phrase structure.” The tune ALL IS WELL, therefore, may have come about as the result of a process known as centonization, “in which nearly identical melodic phrases are reused in the same structural position in a variety of otherwise unrelated folk melodies.” [10]
The earliest known printing of the complete tune, as sung today by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is in the February 21, 1838 issue of the Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church, a newspaper published at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. [11] The note preceding the music states: “The piece of music below is forwarded to you for publication in the Messenger, under the belief, that many of your readers will be pleased to be furnished with a tune, which has become so deservedly popular with the lovers of Sacred Music.” This last line seems to indicate that by this time the tune had already become well-known, perhaps through oral transmission. It is possible earlier printings of this tune may exist.
In Samuel Ashmead’s Musical Repository (1841), ALL IS WELL is credited to Charles Dingley, a New York music typographer and editor of several music periodicals. [12] This credit to Dingley was reprinted in the Philadelphia Repository and Religious Literary Review, May 29, 1841 and in several later hymnals. It is uncertain whether or not any researchers have looked into Dingley’s possible connection with this tune or have searched for it in any of the periodicals edited by Dingley. However, it should be noted that in the 1842 edition of William B. Bradbury’s Young Choir, which also prints this tune, Dingley is not listed as composer or arranger of ALL IS WELL even though he is credited as the book’s “music typographer.” Most of the other tunes in this collection include either a composer’s name or source from which the tune was borrowed, but ALL IS WELL lists neither. [13]
As with “The Spirit of God,” more research is needed to determine the exact origins of the tune. However, even with an exhaustive search it is possible no new information will be found. While I haven’t been able to provide any definitive answers, it is hoped that the information presented here will provide a starting point for other researchers to build upon to hopefully find an earlier publication date for this beloved tune.
Notes:
[1] Two different adaptations of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” have become popular, one by Joseph F. Green, originating in Broadman Songs for Men, No. 2 (1960), and the other by Avis B. Christiansen, from Crusader Hymns (1966).
[2] William Clayton Journal (1921),
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45051/45051-h/45051-h.htm)
[3] “The Dying Saint,” Perry County Democrat (Bloomfield, Pennsylvania), September 7, 1837, [3].
The first known printing of the text is in Pious Songs (1836).
[4] “The Dying Christian” in Richard Jukes, The book that will cheer you, or, Hymns for the living and dying (London: Richard Davies, 1862), 27-28.
It is possible this hymn was first.published in one of Jukes’ earlier collections, as the introduction to The Book That Will Cheer You notes that many of the poems and hymns in this volume had previously been published in “the Author’s lesser volumes, from time to time.”
https://archive.org/details/TheBookThatWillCheerYou/page/n3/mode/2up
Richard Jukes’ obituary in the Primitive Methodist Magazine also attributes this hymn to Jukes.
[5] “All Is Well,” The Wreath: Religion, morality, literature (Philadelphia : J. Van Court, [1848]), 36.
[6] “Come, Come, Ye Saints” was first published with three other songs on a broadside titled Songs from the mountains, with a sketch of the Great Salt Lake Valley and city (Philadelphia: H. M. Clayton, 1848). See Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume 2, no. 363, [BYU Religious Study Center, accessed April 18, 2022]
[7] George D. Pyper, “The Story of Our Hymns,” Improvement Era 39, no .7 (July 1936): 428-429.
Although Pyper did not list his source, he evidently took this information from John Powell’s Twelve Folk Hymns: From the Old Shape Note Hymnbooks and from Oral Tradition (New York: J. Fischer & Bro., 1934), which includes this exact information about the tune ALL IS WELL.
[8] David Russell Hamrick, “Come, Come Ye Saints,” David’s Hymn Blog, published March 2, 2012.
[9] “’All is well’ J. T. White ‘Come Come Ye Saints’ William Clayton,” Bluegrass Messengers, accessed December 5, 2018.
[10] R. Scott Lloyd, “Pioneer Anthem Caught on Quickly,” Church News, July 19, 2007 .
[11] “Sacred Music,” Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church 3, no. 27 (February 21, 1838): 523.
[12] Samuel Ashmead, Musical Repository: being a collection of popular music, principally original, and adapted to the use of Sabbath-Schools, and other juvenile institutions (Philadelphia: Orrin Rogers, 1841), 40-41.
[13] William B. Bradbury and Charles W. Sanders, The Young Choir: adapted to the use of juvenile singing schools, sabbath schools, primary classes, &c. (New York: Mark H. Newman, 1842), 84-85. This book was originally published in 1841, but I have not been able to find a copy of this earlier edition to see if Dingley is listed as the music typographer on it as well.
Latter-day Saint Hymnology 