CASSEL, Flora Hamilton

American composer, hymn writer, music educator, and temperance activist. Born in Otterville, Illinois, she studied voice in Brooklyn and later studied piano and composition with Benjamin C. Blodgett at the Maplewood Institute in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1873, she became head of the music department at Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois. Cassel composed numerous gospel songs and hymn tunes, often collaborating with her husband, physician and hymn writer Elijah Taylor Cassel, who supplied the texts. Their best-known hymns include The King’s Business and Loyalty to Christ. She also wrote both words and music for several hymns. As an active member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, she compiled and published the temperance songbook White Ribbon Vibrations in 1890. Her song Around the World became widely used within the temperance movement. Other compositions include Mother Knows, As We Go, Your Milestone, Beautiful Flowers, Go, Then Go, and The Sunday School Lighthouse. She died in Denver on 17 November 1911 following a carriage accident.