Lisse DeArmond

Lizze de Armond (1847-1936)
Born: Ju­ly 23, 1847, Phil­a­del­phia, Penn­syl­van­ia.
Died: Oc­to­ber 26, 1936, at her home in Swarth­more, Penn­syl­van­ia. Fun­er­al ser­vic­es were held at the Swarth­more Pres­by­ter­i­an Church.
Buried: Wood­lands Cem­e­te­ry, Swarth­more, Penn­sy­lvan­ia.

A grad­u­ate of the State Nor­mal School, West Ches­ter, Penn­syl­van­ia, Liz­zie or­gan­ized the pri­ma­ry de­part­ment of a com­mun­i­ty Sun­day School in Swarth­more, around 1896. Her hus­band, An­drew Good­rich De­Ar­mond, died in 1923.

Very few who at­tend and work in the Sun­day school will fail to re­cog­nize the name of Liz­zie De Ar­mond. She is, per­haps, the most pro­li­fic writ­er of child­ren’s hymns, re­ci­ta­tions, ex­er­cis­es, di­a­logues, etc., of the pre­sent day. At twelve years of age, her first po­em was print­ed in the Ger­man­town, Pa. Tel­eg­raph. In the ear­ly years of her wo­man­hood the cares and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of life crowd­ed out all poss­i­bil­i­ty of writ­ing, and it was not un­til she was left a wi­dow with eight child­ren to sup­port that real ne­ces­si­ty com­pelled her to re­new the work so long ne­glect­ed. Short ar­ti­cles for var­i­ous pa­pers and mag­a­zines, li­bret­tos for can­ta­tas, na­ture stor­ies and other lit­er­a­ry work found a rea­dy mar­ket, and were step­ping stones to high­er achieve­ment.

‘If Your Heart Keeps Right’ now be­ing used so ex­ten­sive­ly in Evan­gel­is­tic meet­ings is her best known hymn. Un­der date of Jan­u­ary 1st, 1915, she writes, “Now in the light of the glad New Year, 1915, if an­y­thing I have writ­ten has helped to lift one soul above the cares and wor­ries of ever­y­day life, and brought it near­er to the great lov­ing heart of Je­sus, the joy is mine, but the glo­ry be­longs to God.”
[Charles Gabriel, The Sing­ers and Their Songs, 23-24.]

--hymntime.com/tch