What is the nationality of this last name?

Question

What's the nationality of the last name Handshy?

Answer 1

Handshy comes from Germany.

Ancestry.com shows they immigrated to America from 1865 to 1886.

Answer 2

There are just a few persons with this name in the US 1880 census, which is the first one that gives the persons place of birth AND the parents place of birth.  Each of the males with the name show that their father was born in Switzerland.  The females will not count.. since they have different maiden names (even though they may also have been born in Switzerland).

Going back to 1850, it will only show the person's birth place.. and I located Frederich Handshy who was born about 1787(his age being 63), who was born in Switzerland.  He and his wife (born in Maryland) were then living in Madison co, Ilinois.

Can't prove it offhand.. but my bet is that the original spelling may have been something other than Handshy.

Your best option is to take a bit of time to work your family back, one generation at a time. Normally one of us here will help with quick census lookups from ancestry.

Send me a note through my profile, and I'll send the image for Frederich, if you think he will wind up being yours.

edit-

the info from ancestry only includes a limited set of immigration records, and will not always include ALL persons of a certain name.  Fred was clearly here prior to 1850.

Answer 3

Sounds English to me.