P.O.W. PASTOR How many ordained ministers do you know who have been prisoners of war? Not very many, I would guess. The sixth minister of Old Stone Presbyterian Church of which I am a member was in just such a situation for seventeen months. He wrote a book about it which he impishly titled “U. S. Bonds” It had originally been intended as a personal journal but family interest caused him to edit and rewrite much of the story of his Civil War imprisonment. He completed that work on January 1, 1874 in ”Ashley Manse” a log house down the hill a bit to the east of the church.
You get a feeling for the intimate things one sets down in a daily diary, but he appended speeches, poetry. He passed his writings along to his wife when she visited “in numbers” as he put it. He often buried his manuscript awaiting her next visit. His prison was at Fort Delaware, just south of Wilmington, in mid-river and within sight of New Castle the place our first minister John Craig had landed in 1734.
Records show his name to have been Issac W. K. Handy. He was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Portsmouth,Va. The first entry in the journal was dated June 17, 1863. He had planned a family trip to visit his wife's family in Maryland He felt that the curbed life they lived occupied Portsmouth has been hard on them. During the eighteen months he had been there he had preached one hundred extra sermons and funeral services in addition to his normal pastoral duties and he visited he sick and dying, too.
In strict accord with military regulations, he applied to the proper Federal officials for permission to visit his wife's ill mother whom she had not seen for five years. Reverend Handy knew he had friends in the Federal army who appreciated and respected his work, but he knew he had one enemy in certain General Dix who had sworn publicly that hat he would never do any favor for Preacher Issac W.K. Handy!
And while you are waiting, help out a bit. We have yet to discover what the “W.K.” initials stand for in his signature. He always signed it with those two loose letters and with absolutely no hint of what they might mean .
A.L.M. January 23, 2006 [c411wds]
