Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (or Sally Adams) (22 February 1805 – 14 August 1848) was an English poet and hymnwriter. A selection of hymns she wrote, published by William Johnson Fox, included her best-known one, "Nearer, My God, to Thee", reportedly played by the band as the RMS Titanic sank in 1912. Early life and education Sarah Fuller Flower was born 22 February 1805, at Old Harlow, Essex, and baptised in September 1806 at the Water Lane Independent Chapel in Bishops Stortford. She was the younger daughter of the radical editor Benjamin Flower, and his wife Eliza Gould. Her father's mother Martha, sister of the wealthy bankers William Fuller and Richard Fuller, had died the month before Adams' birth. Her elder sister was the composer Eliza Flower. Her uncles included Richard Flower, who emigrated to the United States in 1822 and was a founder of the town of Albion, Illinois; and the nonconformist minister John Clayton. Her mother died when she was only five years old and initially her father, a liberal in politics and religion, brought the daughters up, taking a hand in their education. The family moved to Dalston in Middlesex, where they met the writer Harriet Martineau, who was struck by the two sisters and used them for her novel "Deerbrook". In 1823, on a holiday in Scotland with friends of the radical preacher William Johnson Fox, the minister of South Place Unitarian Chapel, London, who was a frequent visitor to their home, Adams broke the female record for climbing up Ben Lomond. Back home, the girls became friends with the young poet Robert Browning, who discussed his religious doubts with Adams. Career After the father's death, about 1825, the sisters became members of the Fox household. Both sisters began literary pursuits, and Adams first fell ill with what became tuberculosis. Soon afterwards, the sisters moved to Upper Clapton, a suburb of London. They attached themselves to the religious society worshipping in South Place, Finsbury, under the pastoral care of Fox. He encouraged and sympathized with the sisters, and they in turn helped him in his work. Eliza, the elder, devoted herself to enriching the musical part of the Chapel service, while Adams contributed hymns. Fox was one of the founders of the Westminster Review. and his Unitarian magazine, the Monthly Repository, printed essays, poems and stories by William Bridges Adams, polemicist and railway engineer, whom Adams