Southwestern University: A. Frank Smith, Jr. Library

Meyer Hymnal Collection: This collection has about 125 of the 300 hymnals in Special Collections. A significant number of the hymnals are Methodist or Methodist Episcopal, but many other denominations are represented, including Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian Science, Moravian, and Mormon. At least one African Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1946) is in the collection, as well as works of the Primitive Methodist sect of England. The earliest complete hymnal is the Wesleys’ Hymns and Sacred Poems (London: printed by W. Strahan; and sold by James Hutton, bookseller . . . and at Mr. Bray’s, 1739). Another eighteenth-century title is The Collection of Hymns Sung in the Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapels (Bath: W. Gye, 1774). Most hymnals, however, are from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Three editions of Catherine Winkworth’s Lyra Germanica. Children’s hymnals, many revival and camp-meeting hymnals, and psalters (including Isaac Watts’s) are also found in the collection. Some hymnals are from the Jackson-Greenwood Collection or the university’s collection of Methodist materials. The collection holds numerous English-language hymnals produced by and for the Methodist Church. There is also a work in the Delaware language. Approximately fifteen hymnals are in German and a few are in other languages, including Dutch and Welsh. Also in Special Collections is a single leaf from the Psalter of the Pilgrim Fathers (1594).