George Bennard
Musician · 1873–1958 · Youngstown, Ohio
Best known for
Songwriter
George Bennard was an Ohio-born Methodist Episcopal evangelist whose 1912 hymn “The Old Rugged Cross” became one of the most-recorded songs in American religious music and a staple of the country, bluegrass, and Southern-gospel repertoire. He wrote more than three hundred hymns over his career, but the “old rugged cross” refrain remains the song he is universally remembered for.
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- Born February 4, 1873, in Youngstown, Ohio; raised in Iowa after the family moved west.
- Father was a coal miner; his death in a mining accident at age forty-nine left George the family’s primary support at sixteen.
- Converted at twenty-two through the evangelistic ministry of the Salvation Army at Canton, Iowa.
- Ordained a Methodist Episcopal minister in 1898 and commissioned as a traveling evangelist; spent the next thirty years leading revivals in Canada, Michigan, and New York.
- Wrote the first verse of “The Old Rugged Cross” in the fall of 1912 in Albion, Michigan, in response to ridicule he had received at a revival meeting.
- Performed the completed hymn publicly for the first time on June 7, 1913, at the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Pokagon, Michigan.
- Wrote more than three hundred hymns across his career.
- Retired to Reed City, Michigan, which today maintains a museum dedicated to his life and ministry.
- Died October 10, 1958, in Reed City.
