Phoebe Knapp ( Palmer; March 9, 1839 – July 10, 1908) was an American composer of music for hymns and an organist. She composed the music for over five hundred hymns.
Biography
Knapp was born in New York City. Her parents were Walter C. Palmer and Phoebe (Worrall) Palmer. She married Joseph Fairchild Knapp, one of the founders and the second president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He had a pipe organ installed in their apartment. Notably, her husband copyrighted all of the tunes she composed as she wrote them.
She and her husband were members of the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church in New York City. The hymn writer Fanny Crosby was also a member of that church and a friend of Palmer.
She wrote over 500 hymn tunes. The most enduring melody she composed is that of the 1873 hymn "Blessed Assurance," for which Fanny Crosby wrote the text.