Honoring our parents

And all those who made them possible

Earlier today, I saw the post put up by Jesse Paris Smith about her father’s birthday. Fred “Sonic” Smith, the husband of Patti Smith, who put up a remembrance shortly after Jesse’s post, died when Jesse was just seven years old. I was moved to mention the passing of my own father, Harold B. Gill, Jr., on April 7 in response to Jesse and she was kind enough to ask his name and we exchanged a few comments back and forth about who he was and how I am attempting to be a good steward of his legacy.

Harold B. Gill, Jr at work.

I commented to Jesse that my father was an historian of “the inarticulate” and forwarded an article he wrote about Edmund Dickinson, a cabinetmaker who lost his life at the Battle of Monmouth as a Major in the service of the Continental Army.

Edmund Dickinson

This is just one example of my father’s work. His generous spirit, much like the generosity shown by Patti and Jesse Paris Smith in their posts today about their beloved’s life and their feelings about it, continues to reverberate in the lives of others. This, to my mind, is true immortality and helping to make others immortal.

The article about Edmund Dickinson, in typical humility, does not mention that my father and mother, Margaret Anne (Snell) Gill, provided the funds to acquire this portrait for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation back in 2000. The “emuseum” system where this record is stored is my mother’s legacy to us all. As the Registrar for the Department of Collections and Conservation from 1972 through 2004, she took the record-keeping of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s collections from a card catalog system such as was used by libraries through several computer-assisted systems to system that makes the collections available over the internet to anyone with an interest.

My sister and I both profited enormously from having these two diligent servants of the past as parents. They had met as young archivists at the Virginia State Library. My mother, just arrived from Creswell, North Carolina, was all of 18 when introduced to “Mr. Gill” who stood behind the reference desk, a 24 year-old graduate of William and Mary College. This scene occurred in the late spring of 1957 and resulted in their marriage on June 27, 1959, just after my father acquired his Master’s degree in history at William and Mary in a single year of study

Margie and Harold just married June 27, 1959

They would have celebrated their 65th anniversary this past June had he not passed away at just over 91 years of age. I was telling Jesse in our correspondence this morning, there was work-in-progess next to hi computer when he passed.

Honoring my parents and their accomplishments is an important part of being a steward of their legacy as a couple. I have more stories to tell and will do so as time allows. In the meantime, please subscribe and support my work here. It will make possible much more in the way preservation and promulgation of my parents work.

As the subtitle of this indicates, I plan to also share content related to our ancestors also since Dad was not only a historian of Colonial Virginia, his great-great-great grandfather, Jones Gill, was also a veteran of the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. He eventually moved to Indian Creek in Amherst County, Virginia where my father and I placed a stone in his honor with the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) stanchion in October 2015.

Jones Gill ‘s grave marker placed by Harold B. Gill, Jr and Harold B. Gill, III in October 2015

I plan to return there on October 3 on a trip down to Charlottesville. This will be the first time I will have been there since the marker was placed. It is not the easiest place to access, so I am hopeful that I can find it. It is not far from a house that Jones’ son, Curtis Gill, built in the nineteenth century. It’s good to have roots that run deep.