E. Grace Updegraff

Eliza Grace Updegraff ((1871-1964) was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, the daughter of a Quaker minister, the Rev. David Brainard Updegraff and his wife Eliza Jane. According to the 1880 census, at age nine, Eliza Grace Updegraff lived in Mount Pleasant, in Jefferson County, Ohio with her parents and siblings, three brothers and two sisters, all born in Ohio. When she was composing hymn tunes she did not use her first initial, and is almost always listed as E. Grace Updegraff. She is known as the composer of two hymn tunes: CARTER ("In doubt and temptation I rest Lord, in Thee") and THE HOPE OF THE AGES ("Jesus comes, he comes in glory"). Two of her texts are "What meaneth this, this strange display?" (see Songs of Love and Praise, No.4 , 1897 and Praise Hymns, 1898) and "Are you faithful to the work?" (see Songs of Help, 1917). In 1906 she married the Rev. Dr. John Talmadge Bergen, a minister in the Reformed Church of America. She was his second wife. In her memory her family (Mohns and Hoagland) has established a scholarship at Lake Forest College, Illinois to assist a student heading toward the Christian ministry or majoring in music.

Mary Louise VanDyke, from research done by VanDyke and John Dalles