Master, the Tempest Is Raging

Mary Ann Baker was born in Orwell, New York in 1832. Her father moved the family to Michigan when Mary was three years old. When she was just seven years old, her father died of tuberculosis, leaving her mother to raise the children alone. Her mother remarried and had more children, but she was often unwell.

Mary and her siblings remained close as they grew up and left home. They all chose professions in the printing industry. Mary lived in Chicago with her sister and worked as a typesetter at a printing company from 1871 until the Great Chicago Fire. This fire destroyed much of the city, including the building she worked in. 

It is not known when Mary began writing hymns. At the time of the Chicago fire, Mary had also been working with composer and choir director Horatio Palmer. Together, they wrote 12  songs. A short time later, Palmer moved away to New York and Mary spent much of her time caring for her family.

During this time, Mary faced some internal storms. Her brother, whom she dearly loved, was dying of tuberculosis, the same illness that took her father, and later her mother. Not long after the loss of her brother, Palmer contacted Mary, wanting her to write the lyrics for a hymn about stilling the tempest. Reflecting on the “rebellion in my own heart,” she prayerfully read Mark 4:36—41, when Jesus calmed the raging storm. “Peace, Be Still,” her title of “Master, the Tempest Is Raging,” was the result. She later reflected that “The Master’s own voice stilled the tempest in my unsanctified heart, and brought it to the calm of a deeper faith and a more perfect trust.”