My adopted
hometown of Westerville, Ohio has a nationally prominent, nineteenth century
composer as its hometown hero. Benjamin
R. Hanby (1833-1867) died very
young, but in his short life he composed simple songs that became worldwide
favorites. His Christmas songs, Up on the Housetop and Who is He in Yonder Stall? are still
performed annually and widely. And while
his Civil War era classic Darling Nelly
Gray is no longer quite as well known was it was in the century after the
war, it is an important historical artifact.
It was sung universally during the war, North and South, and was once so
popular that it was mistaken for the work of Stephen Foster, another balladeer
of the antebellum Union.
I am neither
musicologist nor expert on Hanby, but as a librarian/ historian living in
Westerville, I could not keep from noticing when Hanby’s name crossed my line
of inquiry. Hanby is, perhaps, not quite
famous enough to attract the attention of our scholarly pinnacles such as the
Library of Congress of the National Archives.
Only one print biography, Choose
You This Day: The Legacy of the Hanbys by Dacia Custer Shoemaker
(Westerville, 1983), has been published.
The archives of Otterbein University, Hanby’s alma mater (Class of
1858), has an interesting collection.
But manuscripts in Hanby’s own hand are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Almost all surviving letters of Benjamin
Hanby are in newspaper articles and journals.
Thus I was all the
more surprised when I spotted this in an online auction of rare manuscripts:
“146 Hanby, B. R. (1833-67)
Autographed Letter Signed
American composer of the famous
anti-slavery song “Darling Nelly Gray”
and some 80 other songs. John Tasker
Howard writes, in “Our American Music” (1954):
“One song, written before the outbreak of the war…achieved a tremendous
circulation.” Partial ALS, 2 pp., 5” X 5
½”,np, nd. Fair. Verso contains old archival tape. Consists of three closely cropped, irregular
portions of an ALS affixed together, with the front side reading in full: “When I saw my first song, “Darling Nelly
Gray” in sheet form for the piano, I was fairly nervous with delight, but,
believing that a man likes his own club footed child better than his neighbors
perfectly formed one, I did not pose that others would feel much interest in
it. But I have friends who have felt a
deeper interest in that song than ever I did.
Most Sincerely B. R. Hanby.”
Extremely scarce – possibly one of the few samples of Hanby’s
handwriting in existence. Although
damaged, its content could hardly be improved.
Accompanied by sheet music for Hanby’s popular (among Northern troops) “
’Ole Shady’ or the Song of the Contraband,” 6 pp, 10 X 13 1/4",” Boston,
MA, 1861. Fair to good. A scarce first printing of the Northern
favorite. Bookseller Inventory
#autograph – 423.
Price: US $500.00
Bookseller: Main Street Fine Books
& MSS, ABAA
Galena, IL USA 61036 ”
This
advertisement, which appeared around 2004, was way out of pocketbook range for
me. I contacted the seller awhile back,
who could only tell me that it was sold to a private collector. I am posting it now only to make the contents
available to future scholars, if any, who might wish to read such text by Hanby
as survives.
I
am not sure what the moral of this story is.
It may be that collectors should make documents available to scholars if
asked. Or, it may be that those of us in
the library business should keep up with papers in private hands, if only to
print them (or put them online, like this one) in ways that are searchable,
online or off. Or, do not be in a hurry
to toss out that old pile of letters.
You never know who might want or need them.
