Acknowledgments
This work would not have been possible without the generous contribution of the Olde Guarde, the senior alumnae and alumni of the College of William and Mary. The authors are grateful for their continuing interest and support. We also wish to thank those members of the following institutions who provided essential research assistance: the library and special collections staffs of the Earl Gregg Swem Library (Margaret C. Cook, Kay J. Domine, Sharon Garrison, Susan A Riggs, Ellen R Strong, and Laura F. Parrish) ; the Virginia Historical Society (Waverly Winfree); the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (John E. Ingram) ; Duke University; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the Virginia Theological Seminary (Julia E. Randle); the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Virginia State Library; the Huntington Library ; the State Council of Higher Education; and the Naval Historical Center.
For Part I Thad Tate wishes to thank James Mclachlan for sharing some of the results of his extensive research on college graduates in early America, and Joseph T. Rainer for his assistance with research on the College in the 1750s and 1760s ·and on its occupation by French military forces in 1781-82. He is also grateful to Emory G. Evans, Charles Royster, John C. Dann, and George Green Shackelford for supplying research materials.
For Part II Ludwell Johnson is indebted to Abigail Cabell Johnson for her industrious and discriminating search through many manuscript collections in the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, where she found some very valuable needles in that enormous haystack. Wade Shaffer and Thomas Legg, doctoral candidates at William and Mary, and Professor David Holmes supplied helpful items encountered in their own research, and Dr. Steven Hochman’s encyclopedic knowledge provided a good perspective on Jefferson’s debt to the College. This author is also obligated to the staffs at Monticello and Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.
The authors also wish to thank those who labored with skill and dedication to process the manuscript technically—Theresa Cruz, Erika Monson, Cindy Stevens and Professor John McKnight; and in the Publications Office of the College—S. Dean Olson, director, who coordinated the production and printing; and desktop publishing specialists Sylvia B. Colston and Mary Ann F. Williamson, who created and implemented the format. A special word of thanks is due to the proofreader, Louise Lambert Kale, whose careful pen and critical eye improved the final manuscript.
The authors are particularly indebted to our copy editor, Pamela C. Johnson, for her invaluable help. Her contribution went well beyond the usual tasks of a good copy editor, which are demanding enough. We presented her, in effect, with five discrete minivolumes, and she deserves the credit for giving to the work whatever coherence and consistency it has attained.
We also wish to express our appreciation for their assistance with illustrations to Jochen Wierich; Catherine H. Grosfils, Audio-Visual Editorial Librarian at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; and Kay J. Domine, Louise L. Kale, and S. Dean Olson. For the index, we thank Abigail C. Johnson, who compiled it under severe time pressure, and David Reed, who supplied the computer facilities and wrote a program to process the entries.
Finally, the authors take full responsibility for such errors or deficiencies that may appear in their individual sections. And we hope that those whose names we were unable to include will not think us the less grateful for their assistance.
