Remembering my father

Posting Paid Content from my father's articles about Williamsburg has me reflecting

Harrowings has been established with a couple of different purposes - Paid content for now is focused on making my father’s legacy available to those who are willing to support the work financially. That’s very much appreciated - but Harrowings is also about digging into my Self and telling myself the stories that make me who I am.

The earlier post embedded below tells a lot about Harold Gill and the Foundation that I have established a few days later as well as a bit about my mother, Margaret Anne (nee Snell) Gill.

Having just published two of the articles that Dad wrote over the course of his tenure as consulting editor of the Colonial Williamsburg Journal which were not available online through the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library’s web site, I’m now reflecting on how fortunate I was to have him for a father. Here’s an image of him in his later years - aged about 88 or 89.

Harold B. Gill, Jr. sitting in his recliner, faithful Catzandra at his left in the Sun Room at 100 Underwood Road in Williamsburg, Virginia

I’m grateful to say that Dad stayed here up until April 6, 2024, the day before he passed away at Riverside Doctor’s Hospital with me and my mother at his side.

Memorializing a great scholar is best done, I feel, by stewarding his legacy and I have been hard at work doing just that over the past six months since he passed. There have been highs and lows but mostly, it’s just work - a labor of love.

I did some writing about him in “Not A Model Man” - embedded below:

….and while none of us really are “Model Humans” - he set a standard for me and for my sister as we were growing up. Enthusiasm for life kept him going. He was a photographer, a hobby mycologist - ever finding mushrooms on his walks before his damaged lungs finally prevented him from venturing far. He loved his dogs - like Hudson who appears in the photograph of his study which I used earlier this past week:

My father’s study - Hudson in his happy place.

There is so much work to be done - I could spend the rest of my life organizing and presenting the output of my father’s scholarship and other creative output. I probably will.

We all have our “immortality projects” as the psychologist, Ernest Becker, noted in his seminal work “The Denial of Death” - and I believe that my father managed to give immortality to so many characters out of the 18th century. On his shelf was a volume called “The Historian as Detective” and he very much embodied that. He never lost his passion for digging into the obscure corners of the records that filtered down to us. He was rigorous in practicing simple principles such as “If it is printed, it’s suspect. One never prints anything without an axe to grind. Always go back to your primary sources - or as close to them as possible.” I learned to ask myself why someone would put forth the effort to publish and I can ask myself the same question as I write “Harrowings” - this Substack.

I’m exploring the answers to these questions and invite you to join me. It means so much to get paid subscribers which will help me to do this work without excessive distractions - but just knowing that people ARE subscribing is helpful - Free or Paid.

I am motivated by gratitude for all that’s been, all that is, and all that is to be. There will be a wide range of subjects discussed here as is already evident and I hope you will help me by amplifying the signal of “Harrowings” through the noise of cyberspace.

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and finally, provide comments which will help me to refine and improve what’s being offered. Feedback is SO welcome!