As Q briefly mentions on 05 Jul 06 - 07:36 PM Peace In The Valley was written by Thomas A. Dorsey 1899-1993, (not to be confused with the band leader Tommy Dorsey) and as Tannywheeler adds, it is a good bit older than any of the versions by the performers mentioned, having been written in 1939.

Leeneia is not really wrong. Thomas A. Dorsey was a well-known blues performer but shifted over to gospel music in 1928. His gospel songs retained that blues tinge that tended to set them apart from the white gospel music.

I would give you a link to this brief story from an Elvis Presley site, but it would do no good as I had to rescue it from the Google cache. It has already disappeared from the site.

Thomas A. Dorsey, son of a traveling preacher, was born in 1899 and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. While still a teen he ventured north to Chicago to make his name as a blues singer and piano player. For a while he studied at the Chicago School of Composition and began writing gospel music with a blues flair. It is Thomas A. Dorsey who is credited with coining the term "gospel music," as before him the genre was known as either hymns or spirituals. Plagued by chronic illness and resistance to his new form of music, he reverted to playing in the juke joints and bars in order to make a living.

It was in the late 1930s while traveling through the Indiana countryside enroute to Cincinnati that he was inspired to write the song "(There'll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me)." The world around him had been in turmoil with the coming war. He had been humming an old slave song "We Shall Walk Through The Valley of Peace" when traveling through a serene valley filled with various animals grazing together. He said, "...It made me wonder what's the matter with humanity? What's the matter with mankind? Why couldn't man live in peace like the animals down there?" Thus, a new song was born.

"(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)" became a hit record for Mahalia Jackson and was very popular during World War II. Clyde Julian "Red" Foley backed by the Sunshine Boys Quartet, recorded it in 1951 and it became a country music hit. The Stamps Quartet recorded it in 1952.

Elvis had promised his mother Gladys that he would sing it for her on his January 6, 1957 appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Gordon Stoker of The Jordanaires tells how the producers did not want the young rebel rocker to sing a gospel song, but Elvis insisted. A week later on January 13, 1957, Elvis recorded the song at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, accompanied by Scotty Moore (lead guitar), Bill Black (bass), D. J. Fontana (drums) and The Jordanaires (backing vocals), with Gordon Stoker playing piano.

A search for more information on Thomas A. Dorsey will turn up quite a bit more.   A number of his other songs are still frequently sung by several groups here in the Ozarks.