Bancroft, Charitie Lees

Author

(aka DE CHENEZ), b Merrion, Co Dublin 1841, d Oakland, California, USA 1923. A clergyman’s daughter, née Smith, she grew up in her father’s rectory at Drumragh in Co Tyrone. While in her 20s and still single, she published some hymn texts in a leaflet in 1867, Within the Veil, her best-known hymn having gained a place in Spurgeon’s Our Own Hymn Book a year earlier. She married Arthur E Bancroft in 1869, and after his death became Mrs De Chenez; she is known in hymn-books by either or both of her married surnames. At some point she had emigrated to California with her brother Dr Thos Smith, and she died after being widowed for a second time. Her work (unsurprisingly?) seems to be appreciated only by evangelical editors and churches, and not all of these. No.503.