Trust, Try, And Prove Me: A Song History

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Lida Shivers Leech wrote both the words and the music of "Trust, Try, and Prove Me," and Hymnary.org dates the hymn to 1923.[1][2] Hymnary.org links the text to Malachi 3:10, and hymnals have indexed it under topics such as stewardship and tithing.[1] Leech's tune is named GIVING; Hymnary.org gives its meter as 11.9.10.10.13.10.7, while the Baptist hymnals of 1991 and 2008 list it as irregular.[2] Leech was born in Mayville, New Jersey, in 1873 and died in Long Beach, California, in 1962.[3] Raised in Cape May Court House, she later attended Columbia and Temple universities, worked as organist at Bethany Methodist Church in Camden and as an accompanist at evangelical services, and is credited with some 500 hymn tunes.[3]

A cylindrical brass alms box with small cast figures on its lid

Alms Box, brass, 15th century. An offering box, shown for the hymn's theme of giving; it has no connection to the hymn itself.

The earliest printing in Hymnary.org's index is Songs of Conquest (1923), where the text is signed simply "L. S. L."[4] That book, edited by Joseph F. Berry and issued by the Abingdon Press in New York, is classed by Hymnary.org among Methodist hymnals, and its title names public worship, prayer services, camp meetings and evangelistic campaigns among its intended uses.[5] Through the 1920s and 1930s the hymn reappeared in a long run of songbooks, and in 1940 it entered The Broadman Hymnal; it has since appeared in Baptist Hymnal (1991 and 2008), both editions of The New National Baptist Hymnal (1977 and 2001) and the hymnal of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (2000).[1]

Larry Conger includes it in Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of sixteen gospel hymns arranged for the chromatic mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Trust, Try, And Prove Me"

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Trust, Try, and Prove Me".
  2. Hymnary.org: "GIVING (Leech)".
  3. Hymnary.org: "Lida Shivers Leech".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Songs of Conquest (1923), No. 78".
  5. Hymnary.org: "Songs of Conquest".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Hymns For Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer".
  7. Image: Alms Box, brass, 15th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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