M.E. Abbey
Musician
Best known for
Songwriter
M.E. Abbey was a late-nineteenth-century Baptist preacher and gospel lyricist credited with the 1890 lyric “Life’s Railway to Heaven,” set to a tune by Atlanta gospel composer Charles D. Tillman and adapted in part from an earlier railroad-as-Christian-journey poem by William Shakespeare Hays. The hymn became one of the most-recorded songs in American gospel music.
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- Worked as a Baptist preacher.
- Wrote the lyrics to “Life’s Railway to Heaven” (also opening “Life is like a mountain railroad”) in 1890, building on William Shakespeare Hays’s earlier poem “The Faithful Engineer.”
- Atlanta gospel composer Charles D. Tillman set the lyric to its familiar tune.
- The hymn has since been recorded by the Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Boxcar Willie, the Chuck Wagon Gang, the Oak Ridge Boys, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Brad Paisley, among many others.
