The Collected Works of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC So Far
As we close in on our first anniversary, collecting the publications pertaining to my late father seems like a good activity in which to engage
The Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC began on September 17, 2024 as a way of collecting, preserving, protecting, and publishing the works of Harold Bledsoe Gill, Junior in particular. “Harrowings” is its publishing arm but is mixed with my own creative output and fragments remaining from my grandfather’s legacy as well. This post is an endeavor to collect all of the works related specifically to my late father’s work.
Harold B. Gill. Jr. was certainly “A Man Apart” but this publication is one he edited with the help of his long-time friend, George M. Curtis, III, known as “Jim” Curtis to his friends. The two were intellectually rigorous and some of my earliest memories were of Jim coming over to our home in Birchwood and talking history while playing chess with my father. Those were undoubtedly some of Dad’s happiest times.
My first attempt to write something that would preserve some of my father’s work also touches upon the work of my mother, Margaret Anne (Snell) Gill:
Honoring our parents
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 en…
Below is the first official post of the foundation:
The Harold B Gill Foundation
Earlier today, I began the process of establishing the legal entity, “The Harold B Gill Foundation” as a Limited Liability Corporation through Zenbusiness.com. This organization will do its best to “preserve, protect, and promulgate” the scholarly and creative outputs of my late father, Harold B. Gill, Jr.
This was followed by a list of his works:
Works of Harold B. Gill, Jr.
Harold B. Gill, Jr. - historian authored a number of important works on a number of subjects. His primary focus was 18th century Virginia and the bulk of his career was spent at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation where he started as a Research Assistant in December 1961. He was 28 years old and moved his wife and infant daughter from Richmond, where he and his wife had both been employed as archivists in the Virginia State Library, to Williamsburg, Virginia where he’d live the rest of his 91 years.
Those Colonial Williamsburg Journal articles that are available online were linked to the next post:
Journal Articles of Harold B. Gill, Jr.
A preview of articles that will be made available through the Harold B Gill Foundation is provided in this latest post on Harrowings.
My father’s research included supporting a wide range of efforts across the foundation including seminal DVDs. His research reports are also still to be found on the site of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library site. These were put into this article:
Putting Flesh on the Bones
The Harold B Gill Foundation preserves the work of my late father who really did put “flesh on the bones” of those who left few marks on history in terms of biography - but who, as ordinary people of the 18th century colony of Virginia were instrumental in keeping the wheels of commerce turning - just as we in the 21st century are doing with every cent we spend.
The article will be continued, but for now, this compilation will make the Foundation’s output relevant to my late father more accessible.