Author of "My Savior's Footsteps" in Triumphant Songs No.5 A. R. Meusch is Amanda R. Meusch. Born in Illinois, the 1880 U. S. census shows her in Elmhurst IL as the nine-year-old daughter of Philipp Meusch, president of Elmhurst Proseminar. (That institution was the ‘Gymnasium’-level seminary-preparatory institution of the German Evangelical Synod of North America. Out of Elmhurst Proseminar would come Elmhurst College in the 1920’s: out of the German Evangelical Synod, through mergers, would come the Evangelical and Reformed and then the United Church of Christ.) Amanda’s younger brother, Frederick A. Meusch, would also become a G. E. S. N. A. minister.
Amanda was fully bilingual: In addition to the hymn texts in English currently listed in Hymnary, the publication Rosche’s Geistliche Männerchöre (Chicago, Geo. F. Rosche, 1896) contains 42 hymn texts in German credited to A. R. Meusch. In addition to translations of her own hymn texts, many of these could be translations into German of English-language gospel hymns.
Sources: 1880 U. S. Census, Elmhurst IL; Eden Archive, Eden Seminary, Webster Groves MO, Pastor’s Files.
Amanda R. Meusch