Easton, Robert C.

From: The Loveliest Missionary Tract Ever Published

By Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin, 28 December 2008

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The inside cover featured three portraits set into an aristic framework. There was a portrait of Eliza R. Snow, author of the poem. A little oddly, perhaps, it also included the portrait of Robert C. Easton, a tenor formerly of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, son-in-law of Brigham Young, and a singer then living in New York City � not the portrait of James McGranahan, who wrote the tune most familiarly used today for �O, My Father.� But Easton had introduced that McGranahan tune to the members of the Church by singing �O, My Father� as a solo at the 1893 dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, and he performed it frequently at church services in New York, so his portrait, rather than that of the composer, represented the musical side of the hymn.

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