Hanby Sheet Music

Hanby Sheet Music and Biography

Black & White Photo of Benjamin Hanby's head and Shoulders — _{Benjamin Hanby
22 July 1833-16 March 1867}

Benjamin Hanby was an American composer born on 22nd July 1833 in Rushville, Ohio.

He wrote over eighty songs with some of his most famous including Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, Up on The House Top, and Darling Nelly Gray.

Life and Career

Benjamin’s father William was a Bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and as a family, they were very religious. During his teenage years, Benjamin assisted his father with the Underground Railroad which helped slaves escape to freedom.

The house in which he wrote Darling Nelly Gray in 1856 is now a historical site name ‘Hanby House’. The song tells the story of a slave who has been separated from his love.

That same year at the age of twenty-three he graduated, and briefly taught before becoming a minister. Then in 1860, he became the headteacher of Seven Mile Academy in Seven Mile, Ohio. Four years later in 1864, he became minister of a church in New Paris Ohio, but this was short-lived as by the end of the year he was in charge of a singing school in the same village.

Sadly Hanby suffered an early death from tuberculosis at the age of just thirty-three on 16th March 1867.