Temporary record

On May 20, 1789, James Henry Handy entered the world at Handy Hall, the family's ancestral home near Salisbury, Md. Although his father, Isaac Handy (1762-1791), had died when James was only two years old, his mother, Elizabeth Gale Graham Handy (1766-1840), remained at Handy Hall for many years, providing a stable home for the young man. As a youth, James was sent to acquire business skills with a local merchant, James Ritchie, and, according to his biographer-son, was put to physical labor which "served to modify a somewhat effeminate nature." After his family's removal to Washington in 1809, James formed a partnership with his brother, Edward, to run a grocery business, but during the War of 1812 a shipment of their goods from the West Indies was seized by the British, and the loss sent the firm under.

Securing a clerkship in the Treausury Department, James embarked on a twenty-year career in government, finishing as a clerk in the fourth auditor's office of the Navy Department. He became personally acquainted with each president from Madison to Jackson, maintaining a reputation for integrity that may have saved his job during Jackson's administration, when his drastic cutbacks on staffing eliminated many other clerkships.

On June 29, 1812, James married Maria Ann Pitts Gilliss (1794-1839), the daughter of Levin and Margaret Nutter Gilliss of Somerset County, Md., and together the two had eight children. Sadly for the couple, four of these children died in infancy and three others died before the age of thirty-five. For many years, their eldest son, Isaac, was the family's only survivor. The church was one constant in James' life. A devoutly religious man, he joined the rapidly growing Bridge Street Presbyterian Church shortly after arriving Washington in about 1810, and a few years later, he helped to organize the Second Presbyterian Church in the city. The church -- the same attended by President and Mrs. Lincoln during their years in Washington -- held its early meetings in the Old Treasury Building before finally erecting a structure of its own on New York Avenue in 1823. Handy was a well-respected elder of the church for many years.

Short and slender, James Handy's hair was brown, his eyes blue-gray. He was known as a quick walker, but always carried a cane. He built two splendid homes in Washington, first on I Street and later on 17th Street in the city's up-and-coming west end. He was a public spirited man, a noted promoter of education who supported or served as trustee of the Western Academy, the Howard Society, and, in 1822, of the "public schools" in Washington. He was also a pioneer in introducing the Lancasterian educational system to the city. His public service included duty as a captain of the District of Columbia light infantry militia, six terms as a councilman representing the First Ward in Washington, and a period as city auditor from 1818-1822. Handy owned house-slaves, but was alleged to treat them "kindly." His servants were said to have declined an offer in the early 1830s to manumit them and return them to Liberia.

On July 22, 1832, James Handy died at the home of brother's father-in-law, Rev. John Brackenridge, after an eleven-weeks' illness. His funeral was held the following day at the 2nd Presbyterian Church, and he was buried in Holmead Cemetery, Washington. Maria Gilliss Handy survived her husband seven years, dying in Cambridge, Mass., on December 29, 1839, where she had gone for medical treatment. She was buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge.

Isaac William Ker Handy, the eldest son of James and Maria, was born in Washington on December 14, 1815. He began his formal education at the age of four under the tutelage of Rev. Joshua T. Russell, and received elementary-level schooling under a succession of teachers at various schools, including the one operated by Salmon P. Chase while he was studying law between 1826 and 1829. Isaac's parents sent him to the Charlotte Hall Academy in Maryland, but his schooling was interrupted by his father's death in 1832, when he and his siblings were left to the guardianship of a Mr. Williamson of Georgetown. Unimpressed with Isaac's scholarship and aware of the small size of James's estate, Williamson encouraged the teenager to pursue a career in business. However, six months proved the error of this direction, and Isaac was enrolled at Jefferson College to pursue his true interest, the ministry.

After graduating from Jefferson in 1834, Isaac attended Princeton Theological Seminary, receiving his degree in 1838. He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of the District of Columbia in April, 1838, and accepted the pastorate at the Buckingham Church in Berlin, Md. There, Isaac met a young member of the congregation, Mary Jane Rozelle Purnell (1821-1848), and the encounter blossomed into a marriage on October 28, 1839. The couple had four children: Maria Virginia (1840-1872), Frederick Algernon Graham (1842-1912), Gertrude Eccleston (1844-1883), and Moses Purnell (1847-1898).

In 1844, Handy resigned his charge in Maryland to work as a missionary in Missouri. He settled at an interdenominational congregation in Warsaw, a small town midway between Jefferson City and Kansas City, but when his wife died on February 29, 1848, he returned with her body to Maryland, accepting a call to the joint pastorate of the Port Penn and Drawyers congregations in Delaware. Soon thereafter, he was instrumental in the erection of a new brick sanctuary for the 1st Presbyterian Church in Middletown, Del., assuming its pulpit. During these years he served as a trustee of Delaware College.

Handy's return to the east plunged him into the middle of the New School Presbyterian strife over slavery and the church. Opposed to slavery in principle, but a southerner by heritage, Handy opted for region over principle, supporting southern interests so ardently that he debated the anti-slavery advocate Albert Barnes (1798-1870) in Synod. For a time in the early 1850s, Handy served as Moderator of Synod, and worked extensively as a traveling evangelist on the Delaware-Maryland peninsula. He married a second time on June 7, 1850, to Sarah Selby Martin (d. 1853) of Snow Hill, Md., by whom he was the father of James Henry Martin Handy (1851-1881). The third Mrs. Handy, Rebecca Dilworth (1825-1913), married Isaac on December 6, 1855. They were the parents of Dilworth Trugen (1856-1862), Egbert Gilliss (1858-1938), Eliza Frances Gordon (1859-1889), Isaac Levin Charles (1861-1893), and Louisa Sophia Nutter (b. 1863).

In 1854, Isaac Handy became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Portsmouth, Va. As a delegate to the General Assembly of the New School Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Ohio, 1857, he was a prominent member of the southern flank which seceded from that body to form the United Synod. His originally unionist politics slowly altered in the late 1850s, and by the time that war broke out in 1861, he had become an ardent secessionist, arguing that the election of Lincoln made peaceful union an impossiblity. He followed gladly when the New School General Assembly united with the southern portion of the Old School Presbyterians to form the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States (later the Presbyterian Church in the United States), and his two eldest sons both served in the Confederate army. After the Union army occupied Portsmouth in 1861, Handy received a pass from General Dix to visit his in-laws in New Castle, Del., but he was soon arrested for expressing his southern sympathies too adamantly. He was remanded to Fort Delaware Prison, where he carried on evangelistic work among his fellow prisoners.

With the end of the war in 1865, Handy became pastor of the churches at Orange Court House and Gordonsville, Va., and left there five years later to assume charge of the Old Augustus congregation of Fort Defiance, Va. Still bitter over his imprisonment, he wrote a memoir of his experiences at Fort Delaware, which was published in 1874 under the provocative title, U. S. Bonds. Isaac was also obsessed with another publication project, a genealogical treatise on his family which he intended to call The Annals and Memorials of the Handys and their Kindred. Handy never saw his project completed, dying in Philadelphia on June 14, 1878, while visiting his son Moses, and the attempts of two succeeding generations of Handys to complete the work also fell short. The book was eventually revised, updated and published in 1992. Unrevised, Isaac Handy was buried in the Old Stone Church Cemetery, Fort Defiance, Va.

Frederick Algernon Graham Handy, son of Isaac and his first wife, Mary Jane, was born at Berlin, Md., on March 22, 1842. Only six years old when his mother died and his family returned east, Frederick was sent to stay with an uncle in Baltimore, William Purnell, until his father's remarriage, and was sent there again when his step-mother died in 1853. Frederick entered Maryville College in Tennessee in 1858, graduating just as the Civil War erupted. Lacking his father's consent, Frederick was declined a first lieutenancy in a Confederate company raised in Maryville, but occupied himself by drilling a Tennessee regiment. In 1862, he joined the James River Squadron of the signal corps in Virginia, remaining near the James throughout the war, stationed on gunboats or nearby on shore. In his post-war days, Frederick, like his younger brother Moses, was known as "Major" Handy, although the military antecedents for these titles is debatable.

After the war, Frederick taught school in Baltimore and dabbled in journalism, for a time as part owner (with his brother Moses) of the Richmond Inquirer. He married Lelia Cowherd (1851-1949) in 1872, by whom he had four children: Frederick C., Algernon Lee, Walter K., and Margaret. Establishing his family at "Hay Farm," in Gordonsville, Va., Frederick acted as congressional correspondent for various newspapers, including ones from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk, New Orleans, and Chicago. He was a charter member of both the National Press Club and the newspaper-related Gridiron Club. At his death he had for several years been employed by the U. S. Treasury, where he oversaw the destruction of retired paper money.

In later years Frederick moved to Arlington, Va., where he was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. He died at his summer home in rural Virginia on January 12, 1912, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, D.C. His body was later moved to Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington County, where his widow joined him on July 11, 1949.

Isaac and Mary Jane's third son, Moses Purnell Handy, was born in Warsaw, Mo., on April 14, 1847. Moses spent most of his youth in Portsmouth, Va., and began his studies there at the Virginia Collegiate Institute under the guidance of N. B. Webster. When Portsmouth was evacuated in the face of the Union advance in 1861, however, Moses was sent to live with his uncle William H. Purnell, Baltimore postmaster and a colonel in the Union army. He was able to continue his education at the Rugby Institute in Baltimore, but when his father was confined at Fort Delaware, Moses moved to Delaware City to be near him. He supported himself by clerking for an apothecary, taking over as acting manager when the proprietor, a Confederate sympathizer, was arrested.

Upon his father's release from prison, Moses, still only seventeen, declined his uncle's offer of a northern education and ran the blockade into the Confederacy. Arriving in Richmond at the end of 1864, he immediately volunteered on the staff of General Walter Husted Stevens, and remained in the Confederate capitol until the fall of the city in April, 1865. His written account of that event became his first journalistic sale when The Watchman of New York bought the story and published it serially between February and April, 1866. After the war, he remained in Richmond, employed as a mail clerk for the Christian Observer and as Virginia merchandiser of The Life of Stonewall Jackson. His journalistic break came in the spring of 1866, when the Richmond Dispatch dispatched him to Orange Court House to cover a speech of Congressman Henry Wilson. A second such article reporting an address by Horace Greeley earned him a permanent position with the Dispatch.

Even while connected with the Dispatch, Moses Handy continued to serve as correspondent for other newspapers, including the New York World, and was general manager for the southern states of the American Press Association. In 1873, the New York Tribune sent him as a special correspondent to Key West, Fla., where he gained national attention as the only reporter to witness the transfer of the steamer Virginius from Spanish authorities to the U. S. government, which narrowly averted a war between the two countries. Handy's articles on the transfer of the Virginius prompted the Tribune to offer him a position, and he joined its editorial staff in 1874. He traveled extensively as correspondent for the Tribune, covering the woman's temperance crusade in Ohio and political affairs in the South. His articles in September, 1874, exposing shady monetary arrangements among carpetbagger politicians in Louisiana caused several of the principals to retire temporarily from public life.

In October, 1875, Handy resigned from the Tribune to become editor-in-chief of the Richmond Enquirer, of which he became one-third owner. Internal strife at the Enquirer began almost immediately, culminating in the summer, 1876, when Handy was absent in Philadelphia, working as United States Centennial Commissioner for Virginia (similar to an office he held three years previously at the International Exhibition at Vienna, Austria). He accepted an offer to become associate editor of the Philadelphia Times and remained with that newspaper until late 1880, when he became managing editor of the Philadelphia Press. In his years with the Press, its circulation rose from 10,000 to 60,000. Shortly after working for James G. Blaine's presidential campaign in 1884, Handy purchased and became editor of the Philadelphia News. His health broke in 1887, and after several months' recuperation, he was for a short time managing editor of the New York World before resigning to join Benjamin Harrison's campaign staff for the 1888 election.

Handy's health failed again after the election, and he went to Europe to recuperate. He declined the consulship to Egypt in 1891 in favor of an appointment as Chief of the Department of Publicity and Promotion for the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, the first of the exposition's departments to be organized. In 1891, he returned to Europe as one of five commissioners sent to drum up enthusiasm for the Fair. During the Exposition, 1892-1893, Handy weathered severe attacks on the financial integrity of his department, but was able to resign honorably at the Fair's conclusion. From 1894 to 1895 he acted as special correspondent for the New York Mail and Express and the hicago Inter-Ocean, while living in New York. In 1895, he returned to Chicago as political writer and editor-in-chief of the Times-Herald, where his column, "Major Handy's Point of View" established his reputation as of a minor political prophet.

While on the staff of the Times-Herald, Handy was an organizer of both the American Honest Money League (1896) and the National Business League (1897). He campaigned for William McKinley in 1896, but was denied a patronage position with a foreign consulate. In 1897, he accepted an appointment as Special Commissioner of the United States to the Paris International Exposition of 1900, and spent the fall of that year in France. When Moses fell seriously ill in November, he and his wife returned to America, planning to winter in the warm climate of Augusta, Ga. He died in Augusta on January 8, 1898.

Handy married Sarah Ann Matthews, the daughter of George Hancock and Ann Martha Miller Matthews, in Cumberland County, Va., on April 15, 1869. Together, they became the parents of seven children: William Matthews (1870-1925), Rozelle Purnell (1871-1920), Agnes Gordon (b. 1873), Sarah Virginia Chaillé (1876-1963), Moses Purnell Jr. (1878-1897), Cora Macon (1882-1958), and Henry Jamison (1886-1983). Sarah Handy survived her husband by over thirty years. For many years, she wrote a newspaper advice and housefold-hints column under the pen name of Helen Oldfield. Shortly after Moses' death, she purchased land near Berlin, Md., from her mother-in-law's family, the Dilworths. Here, in 1899 and 1900, she built "Anchuka," where she lived until her death on August 2, 1933. She was buried beside her husband in the Buckingham Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Berlin.

Scope and contents:

The Handy Papers are a massive collection documenting the lives and professional activities of several generations of the Handy Family of Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. As a family of educated, politically active, literary southerners, the Handys were swept up in many of the social and intellectual currents of the mid- and late-19th century, and the collection offers excellent resources for study of the Civil War, particularly its effect on Virginia civilians and southern prisoners of war at Fort Delaware; the history of the southern family; late nineteenth-century American politics; Presbyterian history; late nineteenth-century newspaper journalism; the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1892-93; and genealogy.

The collection centers around the lives of three successive generations of Handys -- James Henry (1789-1832), Isaac William Ker (1815-1878), and Moses Purnell (1847-1898) -- with a substantial representation of Isaac's other sons, Frederick Algernon Graham (1842-1912) and Egbert, and several of his grandchildren. The collection is comprised of 50 boxes: boxes 1 through 20 contain correspondence, 1678-1945, arranged chronologically, followed by undated correspondence filed alphabetically by writer. Boxes 21 through 32 contain material arranged alphabetically by topic; box 33 holds unsorted newspaper clippings. Boxes 34 and 35 contain oversized material, box 36 family notebooks, and boxes 37 through 50 newspaper-clipping scrapbooks.

Isaac Handy's fondness for history led him to the belief that he lived at an important moment in the life of the nation, and every wrinkle of the sectional crisis of the 1850s and 60s seemed to confirm. His correspondence and diaries from the eve of the war through its conclusion (see boxes 5-8 and 28) are an excellent reflection of a well educated southerner's reaction to the great events unfolding about him, and provide insight into the development of his political sympathies. Even after his arrest in July, 1863, and incarceration at Fort Delaware, Handy remained conscious of being part of "history in the making," not only continuing his twenty-five-year habit of keeping a diary, but in planning for a future book on Fort Delaware, solicited memoirs of war service from his fellow prisoners. Handy saved all of these manuscripts, plus the correspondence he received while in prison (much of it from Confederate civilians), pasting them into two large scrapbooks. These have been disbound and the material cataloged item-by-item and interfiled chronologically in boxes 6 through 8. Drafts and copies of the book which Handy wrote about his confinement, U. S. Bonds, are included in box 29:33-35.

Among the many individual areas of interest for historians of the Civil War are the description in Isaac's journal of the battle between the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac, and the journal which Moses Handy kept during his service in the Confederate army in 1865 (box 36). The soldiers' reminiscences collected by Isaac Handy at Fort Delaware include several exceptional accounts, including scarce biographical and autobiographical sketches of M. Jeff Thompson, the mayor of St. Joseph, Mo., turned "Swamp Rat" militia commander. Thompson played a major role during the summer of 1861 in defending Missouri's slave system from John C. Frémont's emancipation proclamation.

Other war-related materials include Isaac Handy's 1861 sermon on "Our National Sins" (28:28) and fast-day sermons from 1861 (28:26). The reminiscences of a myriad of former Confederate officers is scattered throughout Handy's correspondence in the late 1870s, all intended to be used in a history of the war planned by the Philadelphia Times (boxes 12, 13). Finally, there is some documentation (5:88) of Frederick A. G. Handy's father-in-law, Edwin Festus Cowherd, a Confederate soldier.

While the Handy collection provides thorough documentation of life among the eastern Handys, it also contains a significant body of correspondence from the westward sojourn of Isaac and Mary Jane Handy from 1844 to 1848. Isaac and his wife wrote over 100 letters from Missouri, in which they describe the powerful ideological lure of the west, their family's adjustment to their new surroundings, and the social and political climate of the old southwest. These letters were originally mounted in a letterbook, but have been disbound. An index to these letters prepared by Isaac Handy is included in box 28:17, along with the original binding. Isaac's diary (28:3,4) for the years spent in Missouri provides a valuable point of comparison for the letters.

Political and social commentary flows throughout most of the collection, from Jesse Higgins' campaign for reform of the federal legal and judicial systems, 1805-6 (1:24-29), through the fin de siècle political interests and involvements of Moses Handy. The Higgins material is of uncertain provenance -- he does not appear to be related to the Handys -- but may have been collected by Isaac Handy due to his interest in the history of Delaware and the adjacent counties in Pennsylvania.

As might be expected, the political impact of Reconstruction plays a major role in the collection (boxes 9-12), particularly in the letters of Congressman Samuel Jackson Randall (1828-1890) of Pennsylvania. The election of 1896 is well documented (25:6-9), and the collection includes much correspondence with the Republican President-maker Mark Hanna. For his efforts on behalf of the Republican Party in this election, Moses Handy had hoped to net a foreign consulate through Hannah, but was disappointed. Handy's transition from Confederate soldier to Republican politico is subtly documented and provides an interesting case study in political opportunism.

The Handy Papers are an important resource for the history of the Presbyterian Church during the 19th century. The 2nd Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., was a major focus of James Henry Handy's life, and the early history of this congregation is well documented in correspondence dating from the 1820s. Rev. Daniel Baker was the first pastor of the congregation, and although Baker's tenure was controversial, James remained a close friend of Baker's for the rest of their lives. The collection thus contains several items concerning Baker and his relation with the 2nd Church, and several letters written by him after he left to assume a pastorate in Savannah, Ga.

Isaac Handy's vocation as a Presbyterian minister and his avocation as an historical researcher merge in this collection, deepening the documentation of the church. Perhaps spurred by being asked to contribute some biographical sketches to William B. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, Handy sought out primary documents relating to the colonial Presbyterian clergy and congregations (box 24:3-14). Aspects of his own career in the church is documented through a scattered series of letters from former parishoners -- many of whom were received during his imprisonment at Fort Delaware -- and in letters written by Isaac to his sons. A thick file of Isaac's sermons is located in boxes 28:22 through 29:31, several of which were published. Among the most interesting of these sermons is "The Terrible Doings of God" (23:31), which concerns an epidemic near Portsmouth, Va., in 1855. Handy won acclaim during the crisis by staying to help the victims rather than fleeing to safer ground.

Isaac Handy's literary flair was inherited by both Frederick and Moses, and both pursued careers in newspapers. Moses's career is more thoroughly documented than Frederick's, and much of the correspondence in the collection written between 1869 and 1890 (boxes 10-15) concerns Moses' efforts in the newspaper business. There are several folders of general newspaper correspondence (not cataloged item-by-item) dating from 1865 to 1897 (31:26-32:3), an entire box of unsorted clippings by and about the Handys (box 33), and fourteen boxes (37-50) of mounted clippings of Moses, Sarah, and Rozelle Handy's published writings. The journalistic endeavors of other family members can be found in the uncataloged section of the collection, filed under the names of the writers -- see especially Henry Jamison (27:30), Isaac W. K. (27:31-34, 28:18, 29:33-35), Moses P. (29:37), Rozelle P. (30:17), Sarah M. (30:19-21), and William M. (30:22, 31:1,8,10-11). Articles written by unidentified authors are found in 31:12-14.

One of Moses Handy's greatest claims to fame, of course, was his role as chair of Department O (Publicity and Promotion) for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893. His involvement with the Exposition is documented in correspondence, reports, finance, brochures, photographs, and memorabilia (25:12-27:7; boxes 34-35; separated materials). The advertising campaign begun in 1890 has been cited as the prototype of modern publicity strategies, and the Handy Papers offers an unparalleled view into the inner workings of the key department. The collection also contains information about the San Francisco Mid-Winter Exposition (1893), a sort of subsidiary event to the main Chicago attraction (27:8-12), and the general correspondence for 1891-93 (boxes 15-17), contains some references to the World's Fair.

Isaac Handy's lifelong ambition was to publish The Annals and Memorials of the Handys and their Kindred. Beginning in the 1850s, he gathered genealogical data on all descendants of "Samuel Handy, the Progenitor," an Englishman who emigrated to Maryland to farm tobacco. Three drafts of this work, in increasing thickness, were completed in 1857, 1865, and the 1870s (21:2 to 22:7). Isaac was prepared to publish the work in the 1870s and had an advertising flier printed, but when subscriptions did not meet expectations and Handy died in 1878, the project foundered. The manuscript then passed to Moses Handy, whose own intentions for publishing the book never reached fruition, possibly due to his untimely death at the age of fifty. In 1904, Isaac's youngest surviving son, Egbert, acquired the manuscript from Moses's widow, Sarah Matthews Handy (see 18:49-52), but his publication plans did not gather momentum until 1932.

With a great deal of vigor, Egbert attempted to update the manuscript, now sixty years out of date, and had a new advertising circular printed. Again, death removed the Annals ' main advocate. The manuscript remained in the possession of Egbert's widow, Minerva Spencer Handy, and in the 1940s passed to Frederick A. G. Handy's widow, Lelia Cowherd Handy, then living in Arlington, Va. Before her death in 1949, Leila entrusted the material to her granddaughter Mildred Ritchie. The Clements Library acquired the manuscript from Mrs. Ritchie along with other family papers. A century and a third after Isaac began the project, the Annals were published by the Clements Library in 1992.

Much of the early material in box 1 consists of original documents collected by Isaac Handy in the course of his genealogical research. More of these may be found in 22:17. the various drafts of the manuscript, plus many notes and correspondence concerning its publication, are in 21:1 through 23:9.

Provenance:

The earliest manuscripts in the Handy Family Papers, including the papers of James Henry Handy (1789-1832) and his sister Mary Gale Handy (1783-1858) were collected by Isaac W. K. Handy, who also gathered the sources for Presbyterian history. To these he added his own papers and upon his death in 1878, most of this collection was acquired by his son Moses P. Handy. After Moses died in 1898, the papers remained with his widow, Sarah, in Chicago until her removal to "Anchuka" in Maryland in about 1901. In 1904 the collection was split when some of the manuscripts were sent to Egbert G. Handy in New York. The papers that Egbert had in his possession were subsequently further divided between his heirs and his sister-in-law, Lelia, widow of Frederick A. G. Handy. The Clements Library purchased parts of the collection from Frederick's grandchildren in Virginia and Alabama.

Moses Handy's papers, meanwhile, remained at "Anchuka" until they were divided between two of his children, Cora Handy Benson (1882-1958) and Henry Jamison Handy (1886-1983). The Clements purchased these materials from the children of Cora and "Jam." Frederick Handy's surviving papers were acquired from his granddaughter in Alabama.

References:

Handy, Isaac W. K. Annals and memorials of the Handys and their kindred. (Ann Arbor, Mich. : Clements Library, 1992).

Index of photographs in the Handy Family Papers

Index of printed materials in the Handy Family Papers

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