Ira B. Wilson, composer of "Make Me a Blessing"

Ira B. Wilson

I was surprised to see that Ira B. Wilson, a prolific composer of hymns in the first half of the 20th century, has no biography on Wikipedia and not much biographical information
anywhere.

I noticed this when I was thinking about writing a Mother's Day post about his Mothers of Men: A Mother's Day Service, a sheet music anthology of songs for Mother's Day that was published in 1925. It was one of the earliest musical tributes to Mother's Day, which became a national holiday in the US in 1914.

Wilson's name was familiar to me from browsing sheet music and hymnals. His best-remembered hymn is probably "Make Me a Blessing," which has been recorded by a number of artists and continues to be included in hymnals and sung in churches today.

Ira Bishop Wilson was born on September 6, 1880, in Bedford, Iowa, a town of fewer than 1,500 people just a few miles from the Missouri border. He spent most of his life in Dayton, Ohio, where his publisher, Lorenz Publishing Company, was also located. Founded in 1890 by E.S. Lorenz, Lorenz Publishing still exists in Dayton under the name the Lorenz Corporation.

When Wilson was a youth, his sister taught him to play organ and violin. In the early 1900s he attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago before moving to Dayton, where he began working for Lorenz in 1905.

The Volunteer Choir

In addition to writing and arranging many songs under his own name, he also composed under the pseudonyms Fred B. Holton and Chas. Francis Lane and edited a number of hymnals as well as the magazine The Volunteer Choir. His publisher estimated at one time that more than 1.5 million copies of sheet music for his songs were in circulation.

Wilson's greatest hit, "Make Me a Blessing," was copyrighted in 1924. He cowrote the song with George S. Schuler, who is said to have been a roommate of Wilson's at Moody Bible Institute, although Schuler was about eight years younger than Wilson. Wilson wrote the lyrics and Schuler composed the melody. This article claims that Wilson and Schuler were roommates at Moody in 1924, but we know that can't be true, because Wilson had been living in Dayton and working for Lorenz for almost 20 years by that time. The article tells an interesting story about the song, though:

At first, the song was rejected by musical publishers. Not to be stopped, Shuler [sic] had 1,000 copies printed to distribute on his own. One copy fell into the hands of George Dibble, an outstanding singer who was the music director for the International Sunday School Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Dibble asked permission to use the song, and it was granted. Soon people everywhere were singing it and publishers were wanting to distribute copies.

Although he's remembered as a composer of hymns, Wilson wrote other kinds of music too in his nearly half-century-long career as a songwriter.

He wrote or cowrote numerous songs for holidays. Apart from the previously mentioned Mother's Day program, he wrote cantatas for Children's Day, Easter, and Christmas.

Wilson's grave marker

He wrote a handful of secular songs, such as "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Winkle," and "The Childhood of Hiawatha," that were intended for children's choirs. I saw an announcement of "The Childhood of Hiawatha" being performed by a children's choir as recently as 2018.

Under the pseudonym Chas. Francis Lane, he cowrote a humorous three-act musical play, The Minister's Aunt, that was published in 1945 and continues to be performed occasionally. 

As for his personal life, Wilson married, had three sons, and died in Los Angeles on April 3, 1950. Either he married twice or some of the biographical information that is floating around is incorrect, because at the time of his death he was said to be survived by his wife Louise, but he's interred with wife Myrta Carolyn Wilson, who died in 1944, in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. One of his sons, Roger C. Wilson, followed in his dad's footsteps, becoming a composer and editor for Lorenz and the editor of The Volunteer Choir.