Horatio Gates Spafford (October 20, 1828, Troy, New York – September 25, 1888, Jerusalem)[1] was an American lawyer and Presbyterian church elder.

He is best known for penning the Christian hymn "It Is Well With My Soul" following the Great Chicago Fire[2] and the deaths of his four daughters on a transatlantic voyage aboard the S.S. Ville du Havre.

Business demands (zoning issues arising from the conflagration) kept Spafford from joining his wife and four daughters on a family vacation in England, where his friend D. L. Moody would be preaching.

On November 22, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic on the steamship Ville du Havre, the ship was struck by an iron sailing vessel, killing 226 people, including all four of Spafford's daughters: Annie, age 12; Maggie, 7; Bessie, 4; and 18-month old Tanetta.

"[6] Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write It Is Well with My Soul as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.

Following the sinking of the Ville du Havre, Anna gave birth to three more children, Horatio Goertner (November 16, 1875), Bertha Hedges (March 24, 1878), and Grace (January 18, 1881).

[9] In Jerusalem, Spafford and his wife adopted a teenager named Jacob Eliahu (1864–1932), born in Ramallah to a Turkish Jewish family.

(Refrain) At the Eastern front during and after World War I, and during the Armenian and Assyrian genocides, the American Colony supported the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities of Jerusalem by hosting soup kitchens, hospitals, and orphanages.