Gannett, Rev. William Channing, D.D., Boston, Massachusetts, March 13, 1840—December 15, 1923, Rochester, New York. He graduated from Harvard College in 1860; taught school in Newport, Rhode Island one year; and spent four years on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, as agent for the New England Freedmen’s Society doing relief and educational work with the thousands of Negro refugees gathered there. In 1865 he studied for a year in Europe, then entered the Harvard Divinity School from which he graduated in 1868. His first pastorate was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1868-1871. He then spent several years writing a biography of his father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, who had been William Ellery Channing’s successor as minister of the Federal Street Church, Boston. He was minister of Unity Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1877-1883; served the Western Unitarian Conference for four years; was minister at Hinsdale, Illinois, 1887-1889; and of the Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York, 1889-1908, where he remained as minister-emeritus until his death. Throughout his professional career he was closely associated with Frederick Lucian Hosmer, _q.v._ Together they published three small collections entitled _The Thought of God in Hymns and Poems_, the first in 1885, the second in 1894, the third in 1918; and together they also edited _Unity Hymns and Chorals_, 1880, revised edition in 1911. James Vila Blake, _q.v._, was co-editor of the first edition. This little hymn book is a markedly individualistic production with many of the older hymns altered to conform to the beliefs of the editors. In these publications, in which most of their own hymns were first published, and in the careful workmanship with which their thought was brought to a perfection of poetic utterance, Gannett and Hosmer may be compared to Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson whose _Book of Hymns_, 1846, and _Hymns of the Spirit_, 1864, had appeared a generation earlier. Dr. Gannett’s hymns are listed, with annotations “based upon ms. notes kindly supplied by the author” in Julian’s _Dictionary of Hymnology_, pp. 1638-9, as follows: 1. _Bring, O morn thy music! Night thy starlit silence!_ (God Everlasting) Written in 1892, and printed in _A Chorus of Faith_, being an account and resumé of the Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago, 1893. Included in _The Thought of God_, 2^nd Series, 1894, and again in several hymnals. 2. _Clear in memory’s silent reaches_, (Memory) Written in 1877 for a Free Religious Association Festival, and published in _The Thought of God_, 1^st Series, 1885. 3. _From heart to heart, from creed to creed_, (Faith) Written in 1875 for 150^th anniversary of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, and given in _The Thought of God_, 1^st Series, 1885. 4. _He hides within the lily_, (Divine Providence)