Sweet By and By -- Sanford Fillmore Bennett

He was 31 years old and owned a drugstore in Elkhorn, Wisconsin (see map here), and one day he filled a prescription that was perhaps the fastest and most unusual remedy for someone that he’d ever written. Sanford Bennett wasn’t even the first one to utter the phrase ‘by and by’, but when he added ‘Sweet’ in front of it, he felt it was a winner. It was a flash of brilliance that he received, Bennett would probably say, if he were here to respond. Those on the scene that day in Sanford’s apothecary also thought the hymn, concocted on the spot, was one that would endure. One depressed friend, who knew to whom he could go for help, and a friend who replied – that’s all it took for “The Sweet By and By” to enter hymnody’s record in 1868.

These two friends, Sanford Fillmore Bennett and Joseph Philbrick Webster, were apparently so well in tune with one another, that no words between the two were necessary for each to interpret the other’s mood. Each had a talent that the other accessed and augmented with his own. Sanford had been a poet for many years prior to the 1868 encounter in the drugstore, so he was no doubt accustomed to sparks of creativity. The 40-year old Joseph was a local musician, likewise with a long record of musical accomplishment already on his resume, from the East Coast to the Midwest, including in Elkhorn where he’d been since 1859. The two had known each other for about eight years, with Sanford arriving in Elkhorn in 1860, shortly after Webster had arrived, and not long before the U.S. Civil War commenced. The two were separated during Bennett’s military service during the war, but apparently renewed their friendship after it concluded. There were reportedly other occasions on which Bennett lifted his oft-depressed musician-friend’s spirits, so when Webster entered the druggist’s establishment one day, he needed a remedy he knew he could count on his buddy to produce. Reportedly, Sanford guessed Joseph’s mood, just by observing him, but immediately formulated the words for “Sweet By and By” after hearing his unhappy friend’s response to his greeting. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ was followed by a dismissive retort that included the three little words, ‘by and by.’ The druggist-poet’s stanzas flowed effortlessly in the next few minutes, his product was shown to the musician, and notes were spontaneously fused with words, so that just 30 minutes had elapsed in which the fruit of “Sweet By and By” gestated and ripened. Even customers in the store were seemingly taken with this duo’s musical invention, such was its innate appeal. It flowed, to put it simply.

Sanford’s words lifted Joseph’s emotional state that day in 1868, so swiftly that one might wonder if some chemical ingredient was included in the prescription he gave out that day. What’s evident in his words is something any believer might think is intoxicating, yet true. I’m headed for a beautiful place, according to Bennett’s refrain, one where I’ll reunite with others. This promise must have been one that was important to both men who helped craft “The Sweet By and By”, otherwise why would they have attached themselves to it so readily during a 30-minute episode in a Wisconsin drugstore? Fortunately, for them and us, words don’t reside just in their birthplace. These travel, don’t they? Yeh!        

     

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; 101 More Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985; and Then Sings My Soul, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003. 

See this site for all three of the original verses, and also the brief story of the song: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/i/n/t/intsbab.htm