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The house, which was deserted and nearly razed in 1926, was preserved from destruction by Dacia Custer Shoemaker, a relative of the famed General George Custer. Much of what we know about the Hanbys today is the result of her interest and research in making known their story.
It begins with the impoverished childhood of William in western Pennsylvania. Because of this, he was forced into two services of indenture that began when he was nine years old. The second proved disastrous when, at age 15, he entered into a relationship with a cruel master, a former English convict who had been shipped to America. He forced William to work 16-hour days, seven days a week. Finally, a set of circumstances compelled him to run away. His master had killed one of the neighbor’s hogs and denied responsibility. He asked William to back up his lie, but when he refused, he whipped him. On Wednesday, March 24, 1828, at midnight, William fled to nearby Ohio where indentured service was illegal. He had just turned 20.
From that day forward, William vowed that if he ever encountered anyone in a similar circumstance he would never hesitate to help.
Living free
William’s fate landed him in Rushville, Ohio. He was fortunate to have been aided along his journey by those sympathetic to his plight, including the wife of a U.S. Congressman. This is not surprising, considering that the Underground Railroad had already been in place in this region for about 15 years. After a few weeks, he got a job in Rushville with a saddler, Samuel Miller, and they arranged an apprenticeship. So well did it work out that William was brought in as a partner. Not only that, but he and Miller’s daughter had also fallen in love.
However, William’s conscience troubled him, and he returned to Pennsylvania and came to terms with his former master. He was forced to go to court and was convicted of violating his contract. He paid his fines and was free to live as he chose. Two years later his choice was the ministry and he joined the pioneer denomination, the United Brethren in Christ, one of the many small evangelical Christian churches that had originated out of the Second Great Awakening.
In October 1830, William married Ann Miller. They settled in Rushville, and Hanby accepted an appointment as a circuit rider for the Scioto Conference. It required him to travel 170 miles to provide services to fill 28 appointments during a four-week period. That might not seem like much today, but he was doing it on horseback. At the same time, he continued with his harness and saddle business, which supplied him with the bulk of his income.
Growing influence
By 1834, at the age of 26, William was named Presiding Elder of his conference, which consisted of 43 preachers. That year, he traveled 4,000 miles meeting his obligations. In 1837, he was elected his conference’s Financial Agent and Treasurer, which involved him in the denomination’s publication program, foremost of which was their newspaper, The Religious Telescope, whose office was in nearby Circleville. In 1839, William took over as the Telescope’s editor. He decided to move his family to Circleville, and left his mother, sister and brother-in-law to oversee his business and take care of his house.
By then William’s Rushville home had become a stop on the Underground Railroad and he was collaborating with a Rushville doctor, Simon Hyde. It was during this period, in 1842, when he was living in Circleville, that an incident occurred that would later be recorded for posterity.
A fugitive slave, Joseph Selby, came to Rushville and found his way to the Hanby barn, which was used both as his saddle and harness workshop and his hiding place for runaway slaves. Selby was deathly sick and Hanby’s family summoned both William and Dr. Hyde. There was little they could do for Selby but make him comfortable. During his last hours, he revealed the story of his beloved Nelly Gray, who had been sold and sent south the day before they were to be married. Selby had escaped in hopes of earning enough money to purchase her freedom.
O my poor Nelly Gray, they have taken you away,
And I’ll never see my darling any more;
I am sitting by the river and I’m weeping all the day,
For you’ve gone from the old Kentucky shore.
It was this story that Hanby would later tell his children, and it was those words his son Ben would put to music, immortalizing Selby’s story.
Ben Hanby
The oldest son of William Hanby, Ben was born in Rushville in 1833. He would model his life after his father in many ways, especially in his devotion to serve and help others. Ben, however, had a talent that his father never developed, the ability to sing and make music. At the age of 14, he bought himself a flute with money he earned from doing odd jobs that included helping his father with the delivery of the Telescope. It became his constant companion. When he entered Otterbein College in 1849, he began learning how to play the piano.
Otterbein, incidentally, was associated with the United Brethren denomination, and William Hanby, who had been elected as a Bishop in 1845, was one of its founders.
Ben was so involved with extracurricular and other activities while studying at Otterbein that it took him nine years to graduate. He edited a newspaper, participated in various pageants and shows, organized a foreign missionary society, started a singing school, and had a job as a teacher. He had a great affinity for children, and also started his own school for children ages 3-12. It was an informal arrangement with no specific meeting place. The kids would gather around him and he would tell stories, read poems, or play music for them. Already, he had begun writing songs, and it was to these children that Ben introduced them. In fact, it is believed that an early version of Darling Nelly Gray was first sung at his infant school in 1850.
It was not until 1856, after William Hanby had moved the entire family to Westerville in 1854 to the house that today serves as the museum and tribute to the Hanbys, that the completed version of Darling Nelly Gray was first performed.
The success of ‘Nelly Gray’
During this time the Hanby family’s participation in the Underground Railroad was quite active. They lived next door to Otterbein College president Lewis Day, who had been a conductor since the college opened in 1847. A barn behind their house, which served as Bishop Hanby’s saddle and harness shop, was also where they hid the runaways. The Hanbys had a special signal to alert their collaborators that runaways were present. They would put a vase of roses in their front window, with the number of roses indicating the number of slaves. The slaves would have dinner in the house with the Hanby family, and it was Ben’s job to cover the windows to prevent them being seen. It was also his job to lead the slaves out of the barn during the night to the false bottom wagon of toolmaker Thomas Alexander, who would usually take them to Mount Vernon, which was about 30 miles north.
An experience that spring compelled Ben to finish “Darling Nelly Gray.” He went to Lexington with his father, where they witnessed a slave auction in the city square. His sister Elizabeth wrote of how it affected him: “When brother Ben left… he was a happy singing man. When he came back he was a sober and saddened man. What he had seen broke his heart. He couldn’t get it out of his mind.”
Ben used the special occasion of a party in honor of his piano teacher, Cornelia Walker, to introduce the song, and composed it for a quartet that include a friend, William Perkins, and Lydia and Sarah Winter, the cousins of his future wife Kate. The song was dedicated to Ms. Walker, who urged Ben to seek publication. He followed her advice and sent it to the Oliver Ditsen Company in Boston.
He did not receive a response. He assumed that they were not interested. However, while visiting Columbus, his sister Anna was shocked to hear someone singing Ben’s song. She learned that it was on sale at a local music store. When she informed him, she wrote, “He went racing down to the city as fast as his horse could carry him to see for himself.”
After seeing it in print, Ben revised it further and sent the revisions to the publisher. Still, months went by without a word from Ditsen. Finally, they responded that they had lost his address. When Ben wrote back again and asked about royalties, they responded with the following:
“Dear Sir: Your favor received. Nelly Gray is sung on both sides of the Atlantic. We have made the money and you the fame – that balances the account.”
The song had become an immediate success. It was published in many forms and an arrangement for band music became popular. The Christy Minstrels used it as their featured song. It became a favorite in England. It even became popular in the Confederacy. General George Pickett loved it and had his band play it in Chambersburg on the way to the Battle of Gettysburg. The publisher of the song must have made a fortune. After several years, Ben hired a lawyer to sue for his royalties, but all he managed to obtain was $100, with half going to the lawyer.
After his graduation from Otterbein in 1858, Ben married Kate Winter, whom he had been courting for several years, in spite of her mother’s objection. He took a job as an endowment agent for Otterbein, then followed that with a position as a principal at Seven Mile Academy in Hamilton, Ohio. The Civil War had begun and there were reports of slaves fleeing into Union army camps and seeking protection. These slaves came to be known as contraband. A report in the newspapers prompted Ben to write a song about this situation. He called it “Ole Shady”:
Oh, Mass’ got scared and so did his lady,
Dis chile breaks for Ole Uncle Aby,
“Open de gates, out here’s Ole Shady
A coming, coming.”
Hail mighty day.
Despite his previous difficulties with Oliver Ditsen, Ben sent the song to them and they published it and sent him a check for $300. The song quickly became popular with Negro minstrels. An interesting story that illustrates this came from Union Army General William T. Sherman.
“A great many negroes, slaves, had escaped within the Union lines,” Sherman wrote in article published in 1888. “Some were employed as servants by the officers, who paid them regular wages, some were employed by the quartermaster, and the larger number went north, free, in the Government chartered steamboats.”
Sherman had a fond memory of one of those slaves, who was called “Old Shady,” and whose real name was D. Blakely Durant. After supper, Durant would assemble other blacks and they would sing for the soldiers. Their favorite was “Ole Shady.” Sherman wrote that, at the time, he thought it was composed by Durant because it seemed to be the pure expression of a man’s deliverance from bondage. It was not until Kate Hanby wrote Sherman and corrected him on his error after reading Sherman’s article that he learned the truth.
Ben was a man with strong convictions, which he did not hide. When one of his students at Seven Mile Academy made a speech condemning the North’s actions against the South, Ben prevented him from finishing. This so outraged the student’s father, who was an influential trustee of the school, that Ben was forced to resign as principal. This led him to the ministry and two pastorates, but again because of his progressive views regarding the use of music in his services, he met opposition, which cut short his ministries.
This might seem unusual as music has been a major part of services at most Christian churches since the advent of Christianity. However, because of the austerity adopted by such sects as Quakers and the many evangelical groups that formed during the nineteenth century in America, music was seen as a distraction to spiritual considerations.
Ben continued to compose music, including songs for children, which had been his earliest compositions. In 1864 he published his best known song, which has become a classic known by all, “Up on the Housetop.”
O! O! O! Who wouldn’t go,
O! O! O! Who wouldn’t go,
Up on the housetop, Click! Click! Click!
Down thro’ the chimney with Good St. Nick.
That was how the original version went, which has since gone through some minor changes, as for example, “O! O! O!” being changed to “Ho! Ho! Ho!”
Fortunes change
Fate would not be so kind to the Hanbys. At age 33 in 1867, while working for a music publisher in Chicago, Ben was struck down by tuberculosis. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the documentation that proved Ben’s authorship of many of his compositions, and as time passed, even “Darling Nelly Gray” was attributed to Stephen Foster. It was left for Dacia Custer Shoemaker to correct that error in future years.
In 1870, Bishop Hanby lost his house because of debts incurred as a result of loans he had co-signed for others in need. The Bishop also would face persecution because of his outspoken views on temperance in the 1870s. He died penniless and crippled in 1880, living in a rented house.
It does not seem fair that these kind and good men should meet such unhappy endings. Yet, when looking back on his life shortly before his death, the Bishop remarked to his daughter, “I was just thinking… how good life has been to me.”
The commemoration of the Hanbys’ good deeds lives on at the Hanby House, and “all for the little ones’ Christmas joys.”
Perhaps this is their reward.
Editor's Note: For several years Tom Calarco has written various interesting stories for Northeast, but it is always his stories about the Underground Railroad where his true passion is made evident. With the launch of his new Website, www.undergroundrailroadconductor.com, we thought it would be a great opportunity for Tom to describe how his deep love and respect of the UGRR came into being. What follows is part one of his effort.