Priscilla Hiss

Priscilla Hiss (October 13, 1903 – October 14, 1984), born Priscilla Fansler and first married as Priscilla Hobson, was a 20th-century American teacher and book editor, best known as the wife of Alger Hiss, an alleged Communist and former State Department official whose innocence she supported with testimony throughout his two, highly publicized criminal trials in 1949.[1][2][3]

Priscilla Hiss
Born
Priscilla Harriet Fansler

(1903-10-13)October 13, 1903
Evanston, Illinois
DiedOctober 14, 1984(1984-10-14) (aged 81)
New York City
NationalityAmerican
EducationBA cum laude
Alma materBryn Mawr College
Occupationart teacher, book editor
Political partySocialist, alleged Communist, later Village Independent Democrats
Spouse(s)
​
​
(m. 1925; div. 1927)​

​
(m. 1929)​
ChildrenTimothy Hobson, Tony Hiss
Parent(s)Thomas Lafayette Fansler, Willa Roland Spruill

Background
Hiss attended Bryn Mawr College' (here, Rhoads Hall)

Priscilla Harriet Fansler was born on October 13, 1903, in Evanston, Illinois. Her father was Thomas Lafayette Fansler and mother Willa Roland Spruill. She had two older brothers Dean Fansler (a teacher of English at Columbia University and acquaintance of Mortimer J. Adler, a classmate of Whittaker Chambers[4]) and Henry Fansler (who as the Hiss Case began had moved recently to Preston, Maryland, and whom the FBI reported was a "something of a drunkard"[5]). In 1924, she graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. Her roommate Roberta Murray (of Murray Hill, Manhattan) became for a time her sister-in-law as Roberta Fansler. Later, she obtained an MA in English literature from Yale University.[1][2][3]

Career
Hiss taught at the Dalton School (here, main building for grades 4-12, nicknamed "Big Dalton")

In the mid-1920s, Priscilla Hiss was working as an "office manager" at TIME magazine. When the Hiss family moved to Washington, DC (where her husband would join the New Deal government), she taught English at the Potomac School.[1][2][6]

For 1933–1934 and 1934–1935, her Bryn Mawr alumni records show that she engaged in "Research": for 1935–1936, she occupation is blank.[6]

When they moved back to Manhattan in 1947, she worked the Dalton School, as the alumni record confirms.[1][2][6]

After her husband was convicted and imprisoned in the early 1950s, she worked in a bookstore and then as a book editor for publishing houses. In 1966, her alumni details show her working as copy editor for Harcourt, Brace & World. In 1972, she was a senior editor for the Golden Press children's imprint of the Western Publishing Company.[1][6]

Later in life, she worked with Manhattan Community Board 2 in Greenwich Village, Village Independent Democrats, and the Democratic County Committee of New York County.[1]

Hiss Case
Hiss's second husband was Alger Hiss (here, 1950)

During two criminal trials against Alger Hiss, Priscilla Hiss defended her husband with her own testimony. There were two principal areas of interest in her testimony. First, had she typed documents found in the "Baltimore Documents" (scores of typewritten documents plus several documents handwritten by Hiss and Harry Dexter White)? Second, had she, like her husband, met with Whittaker Chambers (the Federal prosecutor's principal witness) after January 1, 1937? She denied both allegations.[1]

Before any trials proceedings began, Alger Hiss's lifelong friend and attorney William L. Marbury Jr. interviewed the two:

I warned both Alger and Priscilla that if there were any skeletons in the closet of either one of them, they would certainly be discovered if suit were filed, and they both assured me there was no cause for worry on that count. However, I found my interview with Priscilla somewhat mystifying. I had asked to see her alone after Alger had left for the office, and we talked for nearly an hour. I got the impression that she felt that in some way she was responsible for the troubles which had come to Alger. However, she stoutly supported Alger's story of his association with "George Crosley" and flatly denied that either she or Alger had ever been connected with a Communist Party apparatus.[7]

At both trials, FBI typewriter experts testified that the Baltimore Documents from Chambers's matched samples typed in the 1930s by Priscilla Hiss on a Woodstock model number N23009 typewriter that the Hiss family had owned.[8] On March 17, 1978, the New York Times published a letter from her:

Miscarriage of Justice
To the Editor:
For more than a quarter of a century, I have kept silence amid the clamor concerning the conviction of Alger Hiss. Recently, statements have appeared in print to the effect that I have made remarks indicating that Alger Hiss was guilty. I fear that if I do not now speak out, my silence will be Interpreted as confirming these statements.
At all times. and with my every fiber, I have believed in the innocence of Alger Hiss. I have never spoken a word to the contrary. To me the conviction of Alger Hiss represents a cruel miscarriage of justice.
I do not intend to make any further statements concerning this painful subject.
PRISCILLA HISS
New York, March 10, 1978[9]

(The letter preceded by just a few days the publication of Allen Weinstein's definitive book Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case.[10][11])

Personal life and death

In 1925, Priscilla Fansler married Thayer Hobson, a New York book publisher (who bought William Morrow and Company when Morrow himself died). In 1926, they had one son, Timothy Hobson. In 1927, they divorced; her alumni records show here "divorced" in 1928.[1][6]

In 1929, she had an affair with William Brown Meloney V, became pregnant with his child, and underwent an abortion. Priscilla in the same year married Alger Hiss,[12]:14, 21, 120, 255n19

On December 13, 1929, Priscilla Fansler Hobson married Alger Hiss in Washington, DC. On August 5, 1941, they had one son, Tony Hiss. In 1959, they separated but did not divorce. (Alger Hiss remarried after her death and outlived her by 12 years.) They had met earlier, in 1924, on an ocean-liner to England. Their nicknames for each other were "Hill" (or "Hilly") and "Prossy" (important because during proceedings Whittaker Chambers and Esther Shemitz remembered "Hilly" and "Dilly").[1][2][3]

In 1932, she registered as a Socialist to vote in the U.S. Presidential election (when Norman Thomas was the Socialist candidate). After the Hiss Case, she was a Village Independent Democrats supporter. As one anecdote tells, during the Great Depression, "when a friend of Alger's remarked how pleasant the day seemed... Priscilla snap[ped] back that it might be nice day for people with homes."[1][6][13]

Her Bryn Mawr alumni details include addresses over the years, including:

Fansler, Priscilla Harriet A.B. 1924
Mrs. Alger Hiss, (formerly Mrs. Francis Thayer Hobson.)

  • 12/31: 180 Claremont St., Cambridge, Mass.
  • 11/33w: 3411 "O" St., N.W., Washington, D.C. or 378 Central Park West, N.Y.C.
  • 2/35: 2831 - 28th St., Washington, D.C. – Perm: 1427 Linden Ave., Baltimore, Md.
  • 1/39: 3415 Volta Place, N.W., Washington, D.C.
  • Full: 12/43: 3210 P. St., " " 7 "
  • 12/47: 22 E. 8th St., NYC. 3.[6]

The alumni details also state she had received an MA in English literature from Columbia University in 1929.[6] William L. Marbury Jr. wrote of Priscilla Hiss:

I carried away an impression of a rather self-assertive woman, who had no intention of letting Alger "steal the show"...
I got the impression that he felt it wiser that his mother and Priscilla should not be too near one another. Mrs. Charles Hiss was a rather masterful character in her own right, and Priscilla was not exactly the type of a submissive daughter-in-law.[7]

After the Hiss Case, Priscilla Hiss used to leave son Tony to stay at the home of Alger Hiss's personal attorney Helen Lehman Buttenweiser and psychiatrist Dr. Viola W. Bernard. (Buttenweiser's uncle, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman, served on the same "Committee for the Marshall Plan" as Alger Hiss during 1948. Bernard's family, the Wertheims, included Henry Morgenthau Jr., boss of Harry Dexter White, and Maurice Wertheim and his daughter Barbara W. Tuchman, whose daughter Jessica Matthews later headed the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace half a century after Alger Hiss had.)[3]

Hiss died age 81 on October 14, 1984, at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan.[1][2]

Works
  • Research in the Fine Arts in the Colleges and Universities of the United States with Roberta Fansler (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1934)[3][14][7][15]

See also

References
  1. Blair, William G. (15 October 1984). "Priscilla Hiss, Who Defended Husband in Trials, Dies at 81". New York Times. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  2. "Priscilla Hiss, Alger Hiss' Wife, Dies at 81 Years". Washington Post. 17 October 1984. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
  3. Hiss, Tony (1999). The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir. Alfred E. Knopf. pp. 16 ("Prossy"), 35 (courtship), 36 ("Hill"), 37 (Quakerisms, Roberta Murray Fansler), 89 (Buttenweiser, Bernard). ISBN 9780375401275. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  4. Adler, Mortimer J. (1977). Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography. Macmillan. p. 66. ISBN 9780025004900. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  5. FBI Silvermaster File. FBI via FOIA. p. 35. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  6. "Priscilla Hiss Bryn Mawr Archives". The Mighty Zed. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  7. Marbury, William L. (1981). "The Hiss-Chambers Libel Suit". Maryland Law Review. University of Maryland - Francis King Carey School of Law: 72 (character, book), 81 (interview). Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  8. "Alger Hiss, lawyer, former diplomat". United Press International. 15 November 1996. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  9. Hiss, Priscilla (17 March 1978). "Letters: Miscarriage of Justice". New York Time.
  10. "Perjury: The Hiss_Chambers Case". Kirkus. 1 April 1978. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  11. Howe, Irving (9 April 1978). "Alger Hiss Retried". New York Times. Retrieved 28 October 2017.
  12. G. Edward White, Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars, New York: Oxford University Press (2004)
  13. Weinstein, Allen (1978). Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case. Knopf (Vintage edition 1979). p. 110. ISBN 9780394728308. Retrieved 7 August 2017.
  14. Research in the Fine Arts in the Colleges and Universities of the United States. OCLC WorldCat. OCLC 459339384.
  15. The Michigan Alumnus, Volume 41. University of Michigan Libraries. 1935. Retrieved 27 October 2017.
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