Rev. J. Hascall
Musician · 1807–1887 · Thompson, Connecticut
Best known for
Songwriter
The Reverend Jefferson Hascall was a Connecticut-born Methodist minister whose 1860 deathbed poem “My Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast” — better known today as “Angel Band” — entered the standard country and bluegrass-gospel repertoire and has been recorded by the Stanley Brothers, Emmylou Harris, the Soggy Bottom Boys, and many others. It is his only known surviving hymn.
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- Born November 6, 1807, in Thompson, Connecticut.
- Graduated from Wilbraham Academy around 1829 and was ordained into the Methodist ministry the same year.
- Served as a presiding elder in the Methodist Worcester Conference and led a major revival in 1847–1848 that recorded more than 100 conversions.
- Represented the New England conferences twice at the church’s General Conference.
- Wrote “Angel Band” (originally “My Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast”) in 1860; the lyric first appeared in J. W. Dadmun’s tunebook The Melodeon that year, set to a Dadmun tune.
- William Batchelder Bradbury set the lyric to the familiar gospel tune in 1862; that pairing is the version that entered the standard country and bluegrass repertoire.
- Spent roughly twenty years as the Methodist minister in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
- Died in Shrewsbury on February 12, 1887.
