Copyright Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
WILLIAMSBURG — The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has filed a legal notice in The Virginian-Pilot seeking to claim property placed in its care nearly 40 years ago. According to the notice, which appeared in the Norfolk-based newspaper on Oct. 18 and 25, a copy of The Virginia Gazette from July 8, 1763, and the 1763 cipher book of a Solomon Higgins have been in the foundation’s possession since July 11, 1986. The Gazette is now owned by the company that owns The Pilot and Daily Press. The material is in Colonial Williamsburg’s John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, but it’s not clear exactly what historical value they hold. “The library has a record for the objects that states they were lent for microfilming in 1986, but there is no additional information beyond what is included in the legal notice,” according to Rockefeller associate librarian Douglas Mayo, who registered the legal notice to the newspapers. Putting items on deposit in a library used to be a fairly common practice as an attractive option for owners who wanted their rare books, manuscripts and documents stored in a secure and climate-controlled environment, explained Emily Guthrie, the Abby and George O’Neill executive director of the Rockefeller library. “Typically, a library will only agree to put items on deposit if they relate to the library’s collecting strengths,” she said, and these pieces do that. Sometimes deposit agreements lead to the items being donated to the library, but sometimes the depositors die without updating their deposit agreements, Guthrie said. The foundation is following the legal process outlined in the Code of Virginia “to claim legal title of an orphaned item on deposit,” she added. The lenders of the documents in question were Mr. and Mrs. Richard R. Woolling of Virginia Beach, whose last known address was on 25th Street there. If there are no valid claims made within 65 days of the notice, the foundation will claim title to the property. Woolling died in 2002 and his wife Margaret died in 2007, according to public records. Their two daughters, Mary Ben Woolling Thomas of Virginia Beach and Jo Stallard Woolling Thomas of Fork Union, know about the legal notice but declined to discuss it or its ramifications when contacted by The Gazette. Research has revealed that the two documents are important 18th century memorabilia. The Virginia Gazette is one of America’s oldest newspapers, first published in 1736. In 1763, the date of the newspaper in question, the Gazette was published by Joseph Royle, a young tradesman who was the third publisher of the Gazette founded in 1736 by William Parks. William Hunter Sr. succeeded Parks and Royle followed Hunter’s death in 1761. There are many missing weekly copies of the colonial Gazette when it was published in Williamsburg from 1736-1780. No known copy of this issue exists in the Library of Congress and Colonial Williamsburg with the exception of the Woolling copy in the Rockefeller library. Cipher books from the 18th century are rare finds. A book cipher is a method of encrypting messages using a shared book or text as the key. Many of the known cipher books of this time were prepared by students. The date associated with the Higgins book is Oct. 9, 1763. Wilford Kale, kalehouse@aol.com
