Born: Ap­ril 7, 1843, Til­ton, New Hamp­shire.

Died: Au­gust 10, 1903, Read­ville, Vir­gin­ia.

Lane served in the 8th New Hamp­shire In­fan­try dur­ing the Amer­i­can ci­vil war. Af­ter the war, he stu­died at the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­to­ry and taught in Onei­da and Uti­ca, New York. He lat­er moved to Woon­sock­et, Rhode Is­land, where he ran a mu­sic store, and served as or­gan­ist and di­rect­ed the choir at St. James’ Epis­co­pal Church for 13 years. He al­so lived for a while in Mon­son, Mass­a­chu­setts; Rich­mond, Vir­gin­ia; and (from 1896) Bal­ti­more, Ma­ry­land. In Bal­ti­more, he worked for the mu­sic firm of San­ders and Stay­man, and was mu­sic di­rect­or at the All Saints Pro­test­ant Epis­co­pal Church.

Af­ter a Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at Saint James Church in Woon­sock­et, Rhode Is­land, Lane’s pas­tor gave him the hymns for the even­ing ser­vice. Lane didn’t care for one hymn’s tune, so while his wife cooked din­ner, he com­posed “Pen­i­tence” to be used in­stead; it was first pub­lished in The Church Hymn­al, by Charles L. Hutch­ins, 1874. This tune is Lane’s sole con­tri­bu­tion to our hymn­als.

Sources

Music

1. Penitence