Mary Louise VanDyke, the librarian of the Dictionary of American Hymnology, based at Oberlin, sent me this in response to my query on the subject of this thread:

I assume your query is related to the origin of tunes and we specialize in texts. However, you may be interested in these quotations from Leonard Ellinwood's Essay on Hymns of Confused Authorship, which is copyrighted with the Dictionary of American Hymnology. As the entry for "My Jesus, I love thee, I know" Ellinwood writes: A copy of this hymn has recently been discovered as an anonymous text on page 640 of THE PRIMITIVE METHODIST MAGAZINE published in London, England, on October, 1862. Earlier it had been believed that William Ralph Featherston of Montreal, aged sixteen, had sent the text to an aunt in Los Angeles who urged him to have it published. It was reputed to have been published first in the LONDON HYMN BOOK (1864 edition) compiled by C.R. Hurditch, a London worker in the YMCA. Recently also, William Volk of Princeton, NJ, found the text in a letter written by William Anderson and dated January 26, 1865. Anderson was a volunteer with Battery B, First New Jersey Artillery, serving with the Army of the Potomac in Grant's drive to Richmond and Petersburg from 1863 until critically wounded. The letter was written from a hospital in Beverly, NJ, to his wife in Flemington, NJ. It is quite possible that he learned the hymn through YMCA contacts which were strong between Montreal, England and the States at that time. The earliest American publication appears to have been in Dwight L. Moody's NORTHWESTERN HYMN BOOK (Chicago: 1868) and Joseph Hillman's THE REVIVALIST (Troy, NY: 1868). Moody had been leading prayer meetings in the London YMCA the year before and may well have learned the hymn there. The hymn remained anonymous until the publication of the Wesleyan Methodist SACRED HYMNS AND TUNES (Syracuse, NY: A.W.Hall, 1902) where Featherston is named as the author for the first time. During his short lifetime, Featherston was a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Montreal." And Ellinwood's entry for "O Jesus, my Savior, to thee I submit" contains this information: "O Jesus, my Savior, to thee I submit" is first found in Richard Allen's COLLECTION OF SPIRITUAL SONGS AND HYMNS SELECTED FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS (Philadelphia: 1801) which he compiled for his African Methodist Episcopal Church. It next is found in Jeremiah Ingalls' CHRISTIAN HARMNONY (Exeter, N.H.: 1805). Then it is in Stith Mead's GENERAL SELECTION (Richmond, VA: 1807) where it is attributed to Mrs. Sarah Jones. She had died in 1794, having lived all of her life in southern Virginia where she had close contact with the itinerant Methodist preachers. Because of the variants of this hymn as published in the above collections, ranging from New Hampshire to Virginia, it is appearent that it circulated in oral tradition before it was published. Stanzas two through seven soon came into use as a separte hymn, again with variants due to oral transmission. There is another hymn which shares only the first-line of Sarah Jones' second stanza, also published by Stith Mead in 1807. There it is anonymous, but in Thomas S. Hinde's PILGRIM'S SONGSTER (Chillicothe, OH: 1815) it is attributed to John Granade. There was an edition of Hinde's collection in 1810 but no copies have been located. Thereafter, both versions of "I love thee" were widely circulated, sometimes anonymously and other times either version has been attributed to Granade." Ellinwood quotes both versions, Mrs. Sarah Jones' , which begins "O Jesus, my Saviour, to thee I submit..." and one questionably by Granade which begins "I love thee, I love thee, I love thee, my love". Since these texts are associated with very old tunes, perhaps Nicholas Temperley's Hymn Tune Index would be of some help to you. I'm afraid this doesn't answer your question, but you may find it of interest.

Mary Louise VanDyke
for Dictionary of American Hymnology, Oberlin College Library

... to which I replied:

Dear Mary Louise,

Thanks for the data! In this case my interest is in both the textual and the melodic history (and their intertwining), and what you sent provides much info I didn't have about the textual end. However, it does not seem to mention the earliest publication of the "submit" text (which contains a "i love thee xX" stanza), namely the 1800? broadside on Washington's death from which I took the text for my online hymnal. Here is that text (it is not clear to me whether "The Christian's Song" and "Love to Christ" are to be taken as two separate poems/hymns, or as two parts of a single one):

URL in my online hymnal: http://www.geocities.com/cigneto/thctxt/en/mysoulsfu1.html

and I then quoted that page in its entirety.

Haruo