Stow, Baron; Smith; S. F.; Fuller, Richard; Jeter, J. B. The Psalmist: A New Collection of Hymns for the use of Baptist Churches, With a Supplement; By Richard Fuller, Pastor of the Seventh Baptist Church, Baltimore, Md. and J. B. Jeter, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Richmond, Va. Boston: Gould and Lincoln | Printed by George C. Rand & Avery, (1847). [8478]
Full morocco with gilt decoration to spine & both boards, binding very good with no cracks, corner tips worn through. All page edges gilt, yellow end papers, light stain to the first few leaves, title page with insect damage in the margin, 11.5 cm (4 1/2 x 3 inches). (48), 752 pp., tight. Infrequent foxing & creased corners, one leaf with small chip in bottom margin. A faint stain comes and goes in the bottom margin throughout. Very good. Full leather.
An edition of Stow & Smith's The Psalmist, with a Supplement by Fuller & Jeter. The Supplement was intended to make the hymnal more attractive to the Baptists of the South and West, who thought that there were too many selections in it that they did not sing, and no representation of popular Southern hymns. The Supplement removed chants contained in The Psalmist (unused in the South) and adds 106 hymns of Southern interest.
"The first Baptist hymnal to achieve denominational status was The Psalmist (1843), compiled by two Massachusetts pastors, Baron Stow (1801-1869) of Boston's Baldwin Place Baptist Church and Samuel F. Smith (1808-1895) of the First Baptist Church of Newton. This began as a private enterprise by Stow and Smith, but by the time of its publication the book had received the stamp of the denomination's principal publishing house...the Psalmist holds 'the distinction of being the first hymnbook published by a national Baptist body in America.'...[It] is a large, well-organized, and comprehensive collection containing words only. Its 1,180 hymns are arranged into thirty-eight topics." - Music & Richardson, "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story", pp. 203-204.
With a signed provenance card from the collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.
