De Witt Bailey correspondence
The Harold B Gill Foundation includes many exchanges with scholars
https://researchpress.uk/news/de-witt-bailey/
In my work going through my late father’s files, I happened to open up an airmail letter from the UK. De Witt Bailey, whose passing was noted a little over a year ago (March 9, 2024) in the link above, left a lovely legacy. Here is a transcription of his letter to Dad, dated 12 October 1990, just after my father and mother had paid him a visit.
Dear Harold,
Very many thanks indeed for your letter of the 1st, enclosing your superb listing of VA gunmakers 1607-1800. My thanks also for the explanations of the several fields; formatting seems to be an international problem with computers, and, at least to me, wastes what must amount to hours of time in dealing with it.
I have not yet had a chance to go through your list name by name against my own materials, but I will do this juast a ssoon as I can settle down to a quiet half-day, and will let you know the results. I was interested to note that there appear to be 35 men on your list who worked prior to 1775. For my own records, I will be incorporating these names into my extract of the MESDA gunmakers, but none of them will be used without your prior knowledge and permission. One of my long-term projects is to build up a clear picture of just how many people were actually making guns in the colonial period in the British colonies prior to and unconnected with the Revolution, in order to assess the relative importancer of the export market from this side of the pond.
Is there a god county map of VA prior to 1775 available with from a book or a store? Something like school-kids would use to fill in the names on in a geography class. I’d like to locate one to use in connection with the above study, filling-in in pencil the number of makers established in a county as information builds up, to get some idea of concentrations.
I’m delighted that, after an assessment of the ‘booty’, you find that your too-short trip to England was a success. It was certainly good to see you both on this side of the pond, and I hope that our next meeting will not be in the too-distant future. I’ve sent off my applications for some grant money to get to Calif. next year, and once that is out of the way, I can start to think about the (south-)eastern seaboard again. It’s almost certain that I will be joining the Geneological Society at the beginning of the year, and as soon as I have got a good idea of what they hold, I will send you a rundown.
I gave your address, and office phone to a good friend of mine, Herman Benninghoff, who owns a musket with a “Virginia 1750" engraved barrel. He believes it was you who located the original contracts and supplied the information which Jay (Gaynor?) passed on to him, and he wants to confirm this directly with you. Herman comes with my highest recommendations as a serious historical student; his collection is more of an archive than a collection.
We had an excellent but too-short even9ng with Jay, his trip walso seems to have been a great success, but only as establishing a base for several more in the near future.
If there is anything I can assist you with on this side, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Look forward to hearing from you, and please give my best to Margie.
All the best,
De Witt
This is the first of many letters which my father had preserved in a shoebox and I plan on making the digitization of these artifacts a major part of this project of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC.
Look for more in the near future and, as always, thank you for reading.