Edward King Isaacson 1857 - 1926

There has been a memory that some members of my Grandmother Amanda Isaac Groves' family have had which has not been knowledgeably confirmed until now in my case.  I had heard that an Isaacs relative was the "greatest penman in the United States" in about the mid nineteenth century.  I did not know the name of this man nor how he was related to our family.

Amanda Isaacs Groves was my paternal grandmother.  My father was her second child.  Her oldest child was Vernon T. Groves.

I recently listened to a presentation my Uncle Vernon  had made at an Association of Christian Recovery:  The Next Step Conference which was held in Costa Mesa, CA Aug. 1-3 (year unknown) which had the theme "Sharing the Healing Journey."  His 80 minute talk was titled:  A Scriptural Response to Perfectionism.  Dr. Groves shared some scripture and much of his own personal experience with Perfectionism and Depression.  In that talk, he sites a memory he has of his mother telling him about "Uncle Ed, the greatest penman in the United States."  She also showed him copies of a journal which featured articles written by Uncle Ed.  As a young boy, Uncle Vernon didn't pay much attention to what his mother told him about Uncle Ed, but during a counseling session in which his counselor told him his Perfectionism had not come from something that happened during his lifetime but from generations before that and had most likely been passed on to him from the generations before him.  This is when he remembered what he had been told about Uncle Ed and decides to do some research to find out more about him.  He is able to visit Valparaiso University and find in the archives some of the same journals with articles written about penmanship by E. K. Isaacs that he had seen as a child.  The archivist told Uncle Vernon that E. K. Isaacs was the greatest penman in the United States - the same words that his mother had used when he was a child.

Uncle Vernon's talk was on a cassette tape I've had for many years but had never listened to until this week.  When I learned the name of this man, I still did not know exactly how he fit into the family.

Fortunately, Bob Berndt, a brother-in-law with a membership in Ancestry.com, began to search.  He has been able to learn quite a bit about E. K. Isaacs and I share that here.

From Gaskells Gazette

From Bob:
The first link, if you scroll to page 9, has a picture and some info on him. He was in Indiana and teaching. 
 https://books.google.com/books?id=PI7gAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA9&dq=E.K.+Isaacs+greatest+penman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeuMuawpTWAhVGzIMKHW1lCA8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=E.K.%20Isaacs%20greatest%20penman&f=false

If you scroll through the second link,  you will find E. K. Isaacs writing supplies. This info comes out of the Penman's Gazette in April 1884,
Just searching E K Isaacs and penman gets all kinds of hits.

https://books.google.com/books?id=LMsBAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PT21&lpg=RA1-PT21&dq=E.K.+Isaacs+was+the+greatest+penman+in+the+United+States&source=bl&ots=jVybFXc8rQ&sig=6go2z07lnrfd5UsdHaIthnDyhms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW7OaYwZTWAhUh5YMKHb7WALYQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=E.K.%20Isaacs%20was%20the%20greatest%20penman%20in%20the%20United%20States&f=false