Life
Son of Gazetteer author Horatio Gates Spafford and Elizabeth Clark Hewitt Spafford, on September 5, 1861, in Chicago, Spafford married Anna Larsen, of Stavanger, Norway. The Spaffords were well known in 1860s Chicago. He was a prominent lawyer, a senior partner in a large and thriving law firm. He and his wife were also prominent supporters and close friends of evangelist Dwight L. Moody. A series of family tragedies began in 1870 when their only son died from pneumonia at the age of four.
Spafford invested in real estate north of an expanding Chicago in the spring of 1871. When the Great Fire of Chicago reduced the city to ashes in October 1871, the same year that Spafford invested in Chicago real estate, it also destroyed most of Spafford's sizable investment.
Read more about this topic: Horatio Spafford
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)