Born: October 20, 1828, North Troy, New York.
Died: October 16, 1888, Jerusalem, Israel, of malaria.
Buried: Jerusalem Protestant Cemetery, Jerusalem, Israel. He lays just a few hundred feet from the reported tomb of King David.
Spafford and his wife had a consistent history of acting on their faith. After the great Chicago Fire of 1871, they devoted countless hours to helping the survivors.
In 1881, they moved to Jerusalem (taking two daughters born after the shipwreck tragedy) and helped found a group called the American Colony; its mission was to serve the poor. The American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem takes its name from that group.
The colony also helped inspire the novel Jerusalem, by Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature.