One-woman show portrays prolific hymnist

• Shellie O’Neal as Fanny Crosby
• Fanny Crosby

It is a modern custom to omit the struggles faced by successful people who also have a physical disability. Many such persons do not want to be known for their accomplishments despite their disability, but for their accomplishments, period. Such is the case with a description of Fanny Crosby, a prolific 19th century poet and hymnist, who is the subject of a one-woman show coming to the First Presbyterian Church, 302 N. McLeod, on Sunday at 2 p.m.

The photographs of Crosby wearing dark glasses were the first clue that she was blind. According to her Wikipedia page, Crosby was born in 1820 in a town north of New York City, and she was blind from a young age. Crosby wrote her first poem at the age of 8 and, unlike the modern custom, most of her early work dealt with the challenges of blind persons.

At 15, she enrolled in the New York Institute for the Blind (NYIB) as a student for eight years and then as a teacher for two. Crosby learned to play the piano, organ, harp, and guitar at NYIB. She gave a concert before Congress and testified multiple times on behalf of funding for the education of the blind.

However, Crosby’s creative interests took off in compositions of poems and music. According to her Wikipedia page “she served as a consecrated Baptist missionary, deaconess, and lay preacher.”

Crosby’s writing ranged from poetry to popular, political and patriotic songs to cantatas and religious songs. She wrote more than 8,000 hymns, praying each one would win people to Christ. Crosby cowrote “Blessed Assurance” with her friend Phoebe Knapp. After the death of her own daughter, she wrote “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.”

Playwright and performer Shellie O’Neal has portrayed Fanny Crosby in her one-woman show titled “This is My Story, This is My Song” in hundreds of churches across Texas and other states. O’Neal is the Navarre College Theater Department Chair in Corsicana, Texas.

The Cuero show is sponsored by the Cuero Ministerial Alliance. After the performance a social with refreshments will follow at Fellowship Hall.