Penn was ed­u­cat­ed at the Male Aca­de­my in Tren­ton, Ten­nes­see, and at Un­ion Un­i­ver­si­ty, Mur­frees­bo­ro, Ten­nes­see. Af­ter read­ing law at the firm of Wil­liams and Wright, he be­came an at­tor­ney and opened his own of­fice in Lex­ing­ton, Ten­nes­see, around 1852. He served as an of­fi­cer in the Amer­i­can ci­vil war, spend­ing over a year as a pri­son­er. Af­ter the war, he moved his fam­i­ly to Jef­fer­son, Tex­as, where he re­turned to the prac­tice of law. Ac­tive in the church, he served as pre­si­dent of the Tex­as Bapt­ist Sun­day School and Col­port­age Con­ven­tion in 1873 and 1874. He lat­er be­came an or­dained Bap­tist min­is­ter, and a well known evan­gel­ist in Tex­as, other states, Scot­land, and Eng­land. His works in­clude:

• Harvest Bells (Pal­es­tine, Tex­as: 1882)
• There Is No Harm in Danc­ing (St. Louis, Mis­sou­ri: Lew­is E. Kline, 1884)
• Harvest Bells No. 2 (with J. M. Hunt) (Cin­cin­na­ti, Ohio: The John Church Co., 1885)
• The Life and La­bors of Major W. E. Penn, pub­lished post­hu­mous­ly in 1896

Sources

Hymns

1. Harvest Bells
2. Sheltering Rock, The

Music

1. Open Mine Eyes