Mr. Lincoln's Photographer

[Christopher Handy]

(11-12-2018 04:57 PM)Christopher Handy Wrote:  

(11-12-2018 10:14 AM)L Verge Wrote:  

(11-12-2018 09:14 AM)Christopher Handy Wrote:  

(11-11-2018 02:07 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Welcome to the forum, Mr. Handy, and thank you so much for clearing things up!

One of our staff members at the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, married into a Greek family of restauranteurs who once owned the building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. that had been Brady's studio. She once ventured to the third-floor (where a skylight existed - I think for better lighting of his subjects?), and there were still things scattered around from a studio. Did Levin Handy use the same studio, and could those have been some of his discards? I think this would have been in the mid-1950s.

Levin C. Handy, at the time of his death, and for some years before, maintained his studio in his home at 494 Maryland Avenue SW (the site is now more or less under the National Air and Space Museum). He did work in Brady's Pennsylvania Avenue studio, for a time, but Brady vacated those premises sometime in the 1880's (he returned to Washington for a while in the 1890's, living at the Maryland Avenue address, and his place of business was on F Street NW). It's possible, I suppose, that some of the detritus from Brady's photographic business may have remained at the site, especially if the building stood vacant or the third floor went unused for some time.

Thank you for the information. We have a family named Handy that attends our annual conferences at Surratt House. They are from Maryland. It never dawned on me to ask if they are related to Levin Handy. Are there still descendants from the Brady/Handy line?

Juliet Handy, who married Mathew Brady, was the daughter of Samuel Handy (who was a clerk in the US Treasury Department) by his third wife, Mary Corbin. Samuel Handy had eleven children by three different wives. By his first wife Maria Chase (who he married in Baltimore in 1807) Juliet (born 1808 in Baltimore, died in infancy); by Priscilla Winder Handy (his second cousin; her father was Col. Levin Handy, a Revolutionary hero who fought in the "Battle of the Barges" on the Chesapeake), Charles Wilson (1810-1859), Levin (1812-1813), Levin (again, 1813-1842), Henry Parke Wilson (1815-1844), Rosalind (1817, died in infancy), William (1818-1872) and Priscilla Winder (1820-1844); by Mary Corbin, Juliet (1823-1887), Samuel S. (my 3rd great-grandfather), and Robert Jenkins Henry (1826-1859). Of those, Charles, Levin, William, Priscilla, Samuel and Robert married and had children; only Charles and Samuel have living descendants (Levin was an officer in the US Navy and died at sea aboard the USS Constellation in 1842, leaving a widow and two young daughters who both died in childhood; Priscilla died in childbirth, having had two daughters who died young; William had five children, of whom four never married, and two grandsons, one of whom never married and died in a sanitarium in Switzerland of TB contracted in the trenches in WWI, the other married, but had no children; Robert had one son, who has no descendants). It's highly likely that any Handys in Maryland are related (my line goes back to a Samuel Handy, who settled on the Eastern Shore in the 1660's), but it's possible that the relationship may be somewhat more distant.

And somewhat pursuant to the above, the manager of Ford's Theatre on the night Lincoln was shot was Edward Henry Handy, who was the third cousin of Juliet Handy's father Samuel (Edward Handy apparently somehow ended up with the bouquet Mrs. Lincoln carried to the theatre, that night, and after his death his heirs donated it to the National Archives).