Fanny Crosby - Bridgeport Library

Although Fanny Crosby spent the majority of her life in Manhattan (growing up at the New York Institution for the Blind, working with the Bowery Rescue Mission, etc.), she did spend the last 11 years of her life in Bridgeport.

Using Darlene Neptune’s Fanny Crosby Still Lives as our guide, we took the train into Bridgeport, Connecticut to see if the sites were still around.

The Bridgeport Public Library is a great place to begin – the librarians were most helpful, and provided us with access to a scrapbook of newspaper stories about Fanny Crosby and her legacy. They also had a nice collection of her books – including at least one autographed copy. It turns out that Fanny, having been born blind, had no need to learn to write, but she had to do so to autograph her books.