William M. Runyan piano sheet music of popular songs

William Marion Runyan (1870–1957) was a Christian composer from the United States who wrote the music to the well-known hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness. In 1870, William Marion Runyan was born in Marion, New York, to a Methodist minister Rev. William White Runyan (born 1828) and his wife Hannah (Orcutt) Runyan (born 1839). At age fourteen, Runyan and his family moved to Marion, Kansas. As a youth, Runyan served as a church organist and graduated from Marion High School in Kansas. Runyan was ordained as a Methodist minister at age twenty-one and then pastored various congregations in Kansas. In 1923 Runyan composed the music to the song "Great is Thy Faithfulness," originally a poem by Thomas O. Chisholm, a friend and a fellow Methodist minister. Runyan retired from Hope in 1948 and received the honorary Doctor of Letters from Wheaton College.