Methodist Hymnology; Comprehending Notices of the Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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David Creamer was an American hymnologist. He served as a co-editor of the Baltimore Monument from and held various positions in the government.
Background
David Creamer was born on November 20, 1812 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was the son of Joshua and Margaret (Smith) Creamer, and the fourth in descent from Henry Creamer, a German emigrant who settled in Westminster County, Maryland.
Career
In 1832 Creamer became a partner in Joshua Creamer & Son, dealers in lumber. For two years (1836 - 1838) he was publisher and co-editor of the Baltimore Monument, which described itself as a “weekly journal devoted to polite literature, science, and the fine arts. ” It was a poor little sheet, ambitious but impecunious, made up largely of snippets from other papers. In it Creamer printed several poetic effusions of his own, and for one or two of them, as a special feature, a musical accompaniment was provided. The financial panic of 1857 almost wiped out his lumber business, and the next year he retired.
Thereafter he was for a considerable time in government employ. A staunch Union man, he was foreman of the jury that investigated the deaths in the attack April 19, 1861, on the 6th Massachusetts Infantry, and through him the people of Massachusetts were informed of the care given their dead and injured by the citizens of Baltimore. In August 1862 he was appointed recruiting officer of the state. In September of the same year the governor nominated him to visit the regiments in and near Washington and to report on their needs. In July 1863 he was made an assessor of internal revenue. Later, for some ten or eleven years, he was a clerk in the Post Office Department in Washington.
This none-too-successful merchant and minor government employee was a devout Methodist. Piety and mild taste for poetry led him to read and reread lovingly the hymns of the Methodist Church, and by private study he made himself the first American hymnologist of any note. Through booksellers in England he acquired a set of the poetical publications of the Wesleys, complete except for a single pamphlet, and many rare hymnals and works on hymnology. His collection, numbering in all about seven hundred volumes, was sold at auction in December 1884 and became the property of Drew Theological Seminary at Madison, New Jersey. In 1848 he published privately in New York his Methodist Hymnology. Except for the smaller Wesleyan Hymnology (London, 1845) by Burgess, the book was without a precedent. It is still valuable, and the simple piety and enthusiasm of the author linger in its pages. He was one of the two laymen on the committee that prepared the Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849). He contributed to the New York Christian Advocate, was for twenty-one years a trustee of Dickinson College, and was a pillar of the Monument Street Methodist Church. He died in Baltimore on Good Friday, 1887, in the house where he had lived for fifty years.