This Week 250 Years Ago

The Harold B Gill Foundation documents the first year of independence

The Bicentennial Engagement Calendar for 1776-1976 by Harold B. Gill, Jr.

My late father compiled and wrote anecdotes for the Bicentennial Engagement Calendar from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In it, he notes significant events that occurred during each week. For example, two hundred and fify years ago on July 6, Patrick Henry took office as the first elected governor of the sovereign commonwealth of Virginia. On the day before, the Virginia Convention had ordered that all mention of the royal family be deleted from the Anglican prayer book used in the state. Finally, outside of Virginia, it is noted that the Provincial Congress of New York, undecided until then, voted in favor of declaring independence, completing the thirteenth vote for independence among the former British colonies then in rebellion against the crown.

Here we sit today, two hundred and fifty years later, a day shy of the anniversary of New York’s vote, and I tap out these bits and bytes into the MacBook Pro for them to be recorded for posterity. “The Work” as I call “Harrowings” is designed to leave a record for research historians such as my father. The facing page illustration for this week in his calendar of 1776 events is a facsimile of the Virginia Gazette’s printing of the Declaration of Independence. The better part of the first two paragraphs is shown. Alexander Purdie published this on July 26, 1776, so it took a little while to get it to the printing office there in Williamsburg. Even today, you can visit it. I find it a fascinating place.

My father traveled to the U.K. to do research on apprentices who had come to Virginia from Christ Hospital in the U.K. back in the 1990s upon his return to Williamsburg from the Georgia Historical Society. While there, he was able to identify many tradesmen who had come from that organization that cared for orphans. Putting flesh on the bones and keeping the dead alive was his life’s work and he accomplished a great deal during his long career. At age 91, he still had work-in-progress at his study’s computer. Now I have it.

Although I have stalled, somewhat, in focusing on his work while I attempt to do my own, I hope to make a practice of posting something of the window he provided through this Bicentennial Engagement Calendar here. He is uncredited as its author, but we know what he was up to. He also produced an internal publication for Colonial Williamsburg Interpreters during this period called “These Boisterous Times” after a quotation by Alexander Purdie. The link goes to the archives of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation where these works are preserved.

It’s my hope that more than a few of you will take an interest in Dad’s work and, if you are able, to support my ongoing work here as I do what I can to keep his legacy living. The motto of both the Colonial Williamsburg and the Harold B Gill Foundations can well be said to be “that the future might learn from the past.”

Onward!