Frances (Fannie) Eugenia Bolton

18601 - 1926

While Frances (Fannie) Bolton worked closely with Ellen G. White as a proofreader of White's manuscripts, a task she did off and on for several years with varying levels of discontent, she is also known for the mixed-meter music she wrote for the hymn "Not I, But Christ." The hymn, written in both 3/4 and 4/4 meter, was #271 in the 1941 Seventh-day Adventist Church Hymnal, and retained as #570 in the1985 SDA Church Hymnal.

Bolton was also a poet whose poems were published in numerous issues of Seventh-day Adventist publications in the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia in the 1890s, and the first two decades of the 20th century. She is listed most often as Fannie Bolton but also as Frances E. and Frances Eugenia. In the 13 August 1901 issue of the Review and Herald, she listed "A Message of Rest," a song with music that she had written as available for 25c and an address in Chicago.

The daughter of a Methodist minister, she joined the SDA Church while serving as a correspondent for a Chicago newspaper. She first started working with White in 1887, with the specific responsibility of correcting spelling and grammatical errors and preventing repetition. By temperament erratic and moody, she left after a short time to study at the University of Michigan.

Bolton later worked with White three more times, but was dismissed each time after a short while because of her persistent complaints about having to work with "faulty" manuscripts. She later expressed remorse about the trouble she had created. Bolton's hymn tune was named for her after she died in 1926.

ds/2012

Endnote

1 The birth year listed is likely accurate within a year. The 1920 U.S Federal Census of persons living in Orange County, Florida, lists a Frances E. Bolton who is sixty years old, was born in Canada, and is a music teacher. Field Tidings, a publication of the Southeastern Union Conference (now Southern Union), April 9, 1919, 5, reports that Bolton wrote a poem, "Farewell," and was present for a farewell party for a minister who was leaving the Orlando, Florida, area because of ill health. The same magazine also lists her as a guest of the Florida Sanitarium in its issue for 2 February 1921. The 1880 census for Evanston, Illinois, lists Fannie Bolton, age 19, a Canadian who is listed with other women as "at school" and under the supervision of a matron.

Sources: Obituary, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 5 August 1926, 22; 13 August 1901, 14; Wayne H. Hooper and Edward E. White, Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, 1988, Review and Herald Publishing Association, 534-35; Field Tidings, 9 April 1919, 5; 2 February 1921, 6; U.S. Federal Census, 1880, 1920.