Charles Crozat Converse

Who was Charles Crozat Converse?

Charles Crozat Converse was a United States attorney who also worked as a composer of church songs. He was born in Warren, Massachusetts. He is notable for setting to music the words of Joseph Scriven to become the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". Converse also published an arrangement of "The Death of Minnehaha", with words by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He studied law and music in Leipzig, Germany, returned home in 1857, and was graduated at the Albany Law School in 1861. Many of his musical compositions appeared under the anagrammatic pen-names “C. O. Nevers,” “Karl Reden,” and “E. C. Revons.” He published a cantata, New Method for the Guitar, Musical Bouquet, The One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Psalm, Sweet Singer, Church Singer and Sayings of Sages. Converse proposed the use of the gender-neutral pronoun, "Thon".