The History Department and University community have recently lost a  scholar, friend, and gentleman in Bill Abbot.  He will be sorely missed by those who knew him and his presence will continue to  influence those who did not for years to come.  We mourn his passing and celebrate his service to the department, to UVa, to the  profession, and to the life of the mind. 

-Brian P. Owensby, Chair

W.W. Abbot, 1922-2009

William Wright Abbot, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Papers of George Washington documentary editing project and former James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia, passed away on the morning of August 31, 2009. He was 87 years old.

Born on May 20, 1922, in Louisville, Ga., Bill Abbot began undergraduate school at Davidson College, N.C., in 1939, and completed his AB at the University of Georgia in 1943. After service overseas in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II, Bill entered graduate school at Duke University, where he received his M.A. in 1949, and his Ph.D. in history in 1953. After graduation, he was appointed Assistant Professor of History at the College of William & Mary, where he eventually rose to the rank of Professor of History. In 1958 he married Eleanor Pearre, and they had two sons, William and John. Bill became James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia in 1966, and served as chairman of the History Department from 1972 to 1974. He retired in 1992.

Bill served as editor of the William and Mary Quarterly from 1955 to 1961, and as editor of the Journal of Southern History from 1961 to 1963. He also wrote two books, The Royal Governors of Georgia, 1754-1775 (1959); and The Colonial Origins of the United States, 1607-1763 (1975). His most remarkable work as a scholar, however, emerged from his stewardship of The Papers of George Washington as Editor-in-Chief from 1977 to 1992. Although the late Professor Don Jackson had founded the project in 1969, and as Editor-in-Chief had guided the publication of the six volumes of The Diaries of George Washington, Bill Abbot defined the scope and direction of the project as it published Washington’s voluminous correspondence. Under Bill’s leadership, 26 volumes of The Papers of George Washington were published in the Colonial; Revolutionary War; Confederation; and Presidential Series. As Editor-in-Chief Emeritus from 1996 to 1999, he also edited all four volumes of the Retirement Series.

Those who had the privilege of working with Bill during his long and exceptionally distinguished career will remember him as a gifted historian and cordial colleague, who was devoted not just to learning, but to sharing knowledge with others for the betterment of all. He was a thoroughgoing gentleman, a mentor to younger scholars, and a magnificent human being. He will be missed. 

Sentiments from Colleagues and Friends

Lenard R. Berlanstein
This outpouring of love for Bill is so appropriate! Colleagues who did not know him missed a kind, generous, and thoughtful man.  From his perch on Rugby Road he followed the news of the department that he had served so well. Yes, it is so sad to know that he is no longer with us.

Cindy Aron
I just want to add my voice.  Bill was one of the truly nicest men I have ever known.   The consummate gentleman, in the very best sense of that word.

Duane Osheim
This outpouring of emails is well deserved. Bill was so open and generous. He always made it a point of getting to know younger scholars and reassure them, when the really needed support, about their teaching and their careers. He treated everyone with respect.

H. C. Erik Midelfort
It's a sad day for all of us who knew and loved Bill.

Ron Dimberg
Bill defined the term gentleman.  I am deeply indebted to him.

Paul Gaston
all of us who knew Bill had both a love for him and an appreciation of what he meant to us.  His acts of personal and professional generosity are legion.  He has read virtually everything I have written, not always agreeing, but always helping me to say better what I wanted to say.  We have been especially fortunate to have him as our over-the-wall neighbor for the last twenty-two years.

Joe Miller
a deeply caring, gracious human being;  he was an exemplar for those of us privileged to know him . . . I am greatly saddened. 

D. Alan Williams
Bill was the patron of everyone who came in contact with him.  I first met him in the summer of 1954 when I went to Williamsburg to begin research on my dissertation.  Bill, Lester Cappon, Thad Tate, and others were gathered in tight quarters in the offices of the Institute of Early American History and the William and Mary Quarterly.  Bill welcomed me as if I were an old veteran, introduced me around, invited me to coffee, and secured a room with Mrs. Ewing, a marvelous widow who had come from Boston with her husband in 1924/5 to assist in his book store which doubled as the public relations office for Colonial Williamsburg.  Bill had lived there, I think, before he married Eleanor.

And all that summer and the next I read microfilm, manuscripts, and talked about colonial history in Bill's office along with other grad students and professionals drifting into CW.  It was a magnificent seminar with some of the best.

Little did I suspect that  we would become colleagues for many years here at the University.

Ed Lengel
The last time I met Bill a few months ago he shook my hand firmly, as always, and joked about the hilarious characters he had met at the Papers of George Washington over the years - including a posse of Spiritualists, and the reincarnation of George Washington himself!

For all that Bill was a mentor, a gentleman, and a friend to me since the first time I met him 13 years ago, I will always remember his sense of humor, and the sincere humanity with which he reached out to all those around him. We should all aspire to share his qualities. I'll miss him terribly.

Mary Anne Andrei
I first met Bill when I worked for the Washington Papers back in 1997, just before he retired. I was drawn to his gentle Georgia accent, his irreverent sense of humor, his mischievous smile and laugh. But Bill also taught
me the fine art of annotating historical documents--how to guide the researcher without imposing your own interpretation. It was more than editorial propriety for him; it was a guiding philosophy, a belief that
the historian (as editor, scholar, and professor) should open avenues of inquiry, rather than close them. He was a wonderful mentor at an important time in my career--just before I went off to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Later, as a friend, he continued to support me and my work. But more importantly, Bill and Eleanor treated me, my husband Ted, and our son Jack, like family. It was his love and charm more than anything that I will so sorely miss.

John Israel
Bill was, indeed, a lovely human being.

Brian Owensby
I have followed the long trail of e-mails lauding his life and his time in the department.  The depth of sentiment conveyed in the many words you have written make me feel a loss at not having known him except in passing over the years.  We are always the sum of ties that bind, and from the heartfelt comments it is clear that the department as a whole was touched by his presence and mourns his loss.  It is a sad day for our community.

Daniel Blake Smith
I was a Ph.D. student of Bill Abbot in the mid 1970s.  He had little interest in the subject of my work--family life in the 18th century Chesapeake--but had a keen concern that whatever I was trying to say would be made lucid and valuable to non-specialists.  He was, as he once said of Edmund Morgan, 'an historian's historian'--by which he meant a scholar who remained true to the facts and historical context but wrote with an eye for general readers as well.  Bill's graduate seminars were, to put it mildly, unique:  consisting often of reading through his mail, which happened to be extraordinary.  "Here's a letter from Bud, fellows" (meaning Bernard Bailyn).  He routinely had his good friend Jack Greene come down from Johns Hopkins and present work to the seminar, which sometimes met with less than admiring responses from those in the class.  He was a unique southern character with his own special grace.  His students, myself included, will remember him as a kind spirit and a marvelous editor who offered us a wonderful introduction into the fascinating world of early America.

Cindy Kierner
When I was in grad school at UVa, I took an editing course with Bill, who later wrote a nice blurb for a collection of documents I had edited. But my favorite memory of Bill Abbot was when he generously agreed to chair my doctoral orals ON ONE DAY'S NOTICE after my advisor pulled out because of car trouble.

What could have been a truly traumatic experience--delay, rescheduling, and even more grad student angst--turned out instead to be a congenial afternoon discussing American and British history. I will always be greatful for Bill's gracious and calming presence that day. (I have bizarrely fond memories of my doctoral orals.)

Phil Chase
I had the great good fortune to have worked with Bill Abbot on the Papers of George Washington for more than two decades.  The things that Bill taught me about history, research, and writing have become such an integral part of my professional life that I can no longer separate them out, and in any case, they are too many to list in a short space.  I can say that editing the Washington Papers with Bill, Dorothy Twohig, and Beverly Runge was as great an experience as any young historian could ever hope for. With Bill setting the pace, we worked very hard and took very seriously our responsibility to get things right and to get volumes out in a timely fashion.  But we also had great fun.  Bill's many stories were always entertaining and to the point.  He was a great teacher and an accomplished writer, who had the rare ability not only to make poor writers good ones, but to make good ones even better.  Bill was a preeminent Washington scholar, of course, but he was more than that.  Bill not only knew a lot of information about Washington.  He had come to know the man himself as well as any non-contemporary could hope to do through a careful and constant reading of Washington's personal correspondence.  Bill's historical insights and his crucial role in creating and nurturing the Washington Papers entitle him to the gratitude of generations to come.  In the meantime, all of us who had the privilege of knowing Bill personally will miss him greatly.

Susan Lee Foard
It has been forty-nine years this week or next since I first met Bill Abbot, when I took his 300-level class on the Constitution at William and Mary, as part of their new master's program in American history. Once he got back from Texas (great stories from that adventure), we were in the same town ever thereafter. We both worked at the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, and then we both came to UVA in 1966, and a few years later he started editing the Papers of George Washington, for which I served as the press editor at the UVA Press. Bill reviewed many manuscripts, served on the board, and generally counseled us through the years; when our director died early, he took on the unenviable task of chairing the committee to find a new press director. Clearly the written word was his delight, especially but by no means exclusively history, and he helped everyone he could to improve their manuscripts. But most of all, he, more than anyone else I have ever met, listened to what I said. He often would ask an unexpected question to find out my opinion, just to keep me on my toes, I always thought. In short, he was a teacher. He also wasn't inclined to think of history as a male domain, unlike many of his peers. We are all fortunate to have been his students and his friends.
                                                                                              
Charlene Bickford
In the 1970s, when I was a young documentary editor, Bill Abbot welcomed, listened to, assisted, and advised me, while consistently treating me as a valued colleague.  He was one of the people that I would seek out at gatherings because he could be counted on to be inclusive, tell great stories, and make those around him laugh.  His self effacing humorous delivery never failed to amuse.
As the local arrangements chair at one meeting of the Association for Documentary Editing, Bill managed to get a laugh out of people virtually every time he stood up to make an announcement.  From that same meeting I'm sure that most in attendance will always remember his comment at a session on "Finding Women's Voices in Men's Papers."  Bill stood and said, "Martha burned all of her letters to George. I apologize."  Bill was a joy to be around, a scholar who freely shared what he knew, a wonderful mentor, and much loved by his colleagues.  He will be missed but we'll have our memories.