Background

Percy William Filby was born on December 10, 1911, in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. He was a son of William Lusher Filby and Florence A. Filby, maiden name Stanton.

Education

Percy William Filby attended Cambridge and County High School. In his youth, he played cricket, rugby, football, and tennis. He was a chorister at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a head soloist in 1925-1926. Filby took German courses at Cambridge University. In 1935, he was granted a leave of absence.

Career

Percy William Filby was a librarian at Cambridge University, where he worked in the rare books division from 1930 until 1937 and was director of the science library until 1940. It was at Cambridge University Library that he developed a keen interest in rare books that later became a major vocation of his life.

In 1935, he was granted a leave of absence from Cambridge University to become secretary/amanuensis to Sir James G. Frazer, author of The Golden Bough. Sir James was blind and paralyzed, while Lady Frazer was totally deaf, and so for the ensuing four years, Filby served as the pair's eyes and ears. Many years later in the United States, he often gave talks on his life with the Frazers. In July 1940, after assisting scientists in a support capacity in the development of radar, he volunteered for the British army, entering as a private but soon rising to the rank of captain. His knowledge of German led to his transfer to the British Intelligence Corps as a member of the cryptographic team at Bletchley, where Germany's ULTRA code was broken. From 1943 until the end of the war, he was head of the German Diplomatic Section. Discharged with the rank of captain, he served with the British Foreign Service in Cyprus, Germany and United States.

In 1957, he immigrated to the United States where he returned to library work. He was the assistant director and librarian of the Peabody Institute Library (now George Peabody Library) in Baltimore from 1957 to 1965. There, he began publishing its collections and mounted several exhibitions, most with definitive catalogs. Perhaps the most famous of them is 2000 Years of Calligraphy, which became the premier bibliographic standard in the field. His exhibition on calligraphy that the Peabody Library held in conjunction with the Walters Art Gallery and the Baltimore Museum of Art caused Baltimore to be recognized by the London Times as "the calligraphy center in America." While at the Peabody Library, Filby found that the major interest of its users was in genealogy and heraldry. Since the Peabody held outstanding materials in those fields, he assembled all of the library's extensive holdings on those subjects and installed them on the first floor, so that readers could browse among the collections rather than ask for specific books. He became aware that genealogy was little known to most library users and librarians so he compiled a list of the most used books in the 32 American Antiquarian Society field and updated those lists regularly until 1986, at which time the list contained 34,000 titles. To this day, staff members of the Library of Congress regard his compilation as the genealogical "bible."

In 1965, Percy William Filby joined the Maryland Historical Society as its chief librarian. In 1972, he succeeded Harold R. Manakee, who had been director of the Maryland Historical Society for 10 years. He helped reorganize its manuscript collection, which at the time was some 2 million papers. Filby retired in 1978.

Along with Edward G. Howard, he wrote the definitive study of the history of the "Star Spangled Banner" that was heralded by the New York Times as the most important work ever written on the national anthem. The book corrected many commonly held beliefs, accepted as fact, about the writing of the national anthem. "I don't see why kids should have to believe in inaccurate stories," Filby told The New York Times in a 1972 interview. He suggested that because it was raining the night the British attacked Fort McHenry, it would have taken a gale to make the flag wave. "What Key saw was a flag wrapped soggily around a pole," he said in the interview. And he discounted the notion that Key scribbled lyrics on the back of an envelope. "Envelopes were not in common use until 1840, so he probably wrote the words on a piece of paper," he said. Filby also cast doubt on the idea that Key stepped off a ship with four completed stanzas of the song ready for public consumption. "He didn't come running ashore crying, "Chaps, I've just produced the national anthem," he said.

Achievements

• While at the Maryland Historical Society, Percy William Filby succeeded in completely revolutionizing the library by converting it to one of the leading historical libraries in the country. He was made an Honorary President of the Filby Association in 1997. In 1998, Scholarly Resources, publishers of Wilmington, Delaware, awarded an annual prize of $1000 named the "Filby Prize" to be awarded to a genealogical librarian. In 2000, the American Society of Genealogists conferred its Certificate of Appreciation for Percy William Filby's genealogical publications.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Italians to America, Jan. 1892 - Dec. 1892: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports

    (As with the highly regarded companion series on German im...)

    1996
  • Germans to America: Lists of Passengers Arriving at U.S. Ports

    (Germans to America provides both genealogists and researc...)

    1988
  • A Bibliography of American County Histories

    (Bibliography presenting a comprehensive list of 5,000 cou...)

    1985
  • Star Spangled Books: Books, Sheet Music, Newspapers, Manuscripts and Persons Associated With the Star Spangled Banner 1972
  • Calligraphy & Handwriting in America, 1710-1962 1963
  • Directory of American Libraries With Genealogy or Local History Collections 1988

Membership

• 

  Maryland Historical Society , United States

  1965 - 1978

• 

  Eight leading Baltimoreans founded the Baltimore Bibliophiles in 1954 because the city had no book club comparable to the Grolier Club in New York, the Caxton Society in Chicago, or the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston. Although not a founding member, Percy William Filby was elected to membership shortly after his arrival in Baltimore and for the next three-and-a-half decades was one of its most active members. Every year, "The Bibs" (as its members affectionately call the organization) donated books and pamphlets for an annual auction. Filby, with his delightful English accent, served as its auctioneer. It was in this capacity that the late Edgar Heyl, who cataloged the auction, referred to Filby as "the man with the Sotheby swing" in an article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun. It was at these auctions that Percy William Filby and his wife Vera especially shone. He served as president of Baltimore Bibliophiles from 1964 through 1966 and again from 1991 through 1993.

  Baltimore Bibliophiles , United States

  1957

• Bibliographical Society of America , United States

  1976 - 1984

• 

  Grolier Club , United States

• In 1976-1978, Percy William Filby was the president of the Manuscript Society.

  Manuscript Society , United States

• Having been United States Correspondent of the Filby Association for many years, Percy William Filby was made Honorary President in 1997.

  Filby Association , United Kingdom

Interests

• rare books

Connections

In 1936, Percy William Filby married Nancie Elizabeth Giddens. They had four children: sons Guy Filby and Roderick Filby, and daughters Ann V. Chesworth and Jane V. Johnson. They divorced. In 1957, he married Vera Ruth Weakliem.

Father:

William Lusher Filby

Mother:

Florence A. Filby

Wife:

Vera Ruth Filby

Vera Ruth Filby served with the Women Accepted for Voluntary Exceptional Service and the Communications Supplementary Activity, the Navy's cryptologic organization, during World War II. Except for six months after her discharge, she served with National Security Agency (NSA) and its predecessors for the rest of her career.

From 1946-1961, she worked with a team of "troubleshooters" to help clear up backlogged analytic problems. VeraFilby also worked at the British Government Communications Headquarters, where she was in charge of reporting on a special problem. At NSA in 1959, she studied Russian and Chinese and took the Intensive Study Program in General Cryptanalysis, taught by the renowned Lambros Callimahos. In 1965, she joined the National Cryptologic School, where for nearly 30 years she developed and taught courses on SIGINT reporting, mentored instructors, and taught SIGINT overview classes to partner agencies - something almost unheard of until then. She was the first NSA winner of the CIA's Sherman Kent Award for intelligence literature. In 1970, she was named the first NCS Teacher of the Year, the award now known as the "Vera Filby Teacher of the Year." The Signals Intelligence Directorate honored her by publishing a Q&A newsletter column known as "Virtual Vera."

Percy William Filby and his wife Vera Ruth Filby worked jointly on many projects: completing his hundreds of publications, writing, and mounting exhibitions. He often remarked that without her able assistance he could not have accomplished as much.

ex-wife:

Nancie Elizabeth Giddens

Son:

Guy Filby

Son:

Roderick Filby

Daughter:

Ann V. Chesworth

Daughter:

Jane V. Johnson