Subject: William Preston. Seeking to source silhouette image.
Date: Monday 6 April 2009. 3:35 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
From: Jim Glanville <[log in to unmask]>

Fellow VA-Hist list subscribers:

On March 30 the Roanoke Times published a picture said to be that of 
William Preston (1730-1783) of Greenfield and Smithfield in Virginia. 
The staff of the Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg quickly correctly 
identified the published image as that of Preston's grandson William 
Ballard Preston. A published newspaper correction is reported to be 
forthcoming but has not yet appeared.

That event has led to a small hunt out here on the Virginia frontier for 
images of the "right" William Preston.

To my knowledge, there exists only one so-labeled image of Colonel 
William Preston. That image is a silhouette shown in the upper left hand 
corner of page 285 of Frederick B. Kegley's "Kegley's Virginia Frontier, 
the beginning of the southwest, the Roanoke of colonial days" (Roanoke: 
Southwest Virginia Historical Society, 1938).

I have posted the image at: 
http://www.holstonia.net/files/WilliamPreston-FBKegley1938.jpg.

Very recent personal communications to this writer have established that 
the source of this image is not known to 1. Mary B. Kegley -- who was 
F.B.'s coauthor on a number of books. 2. The curator of the Filson 
Historical Society. 3. The staff of the Smithfield Plantation.

Patricia Givens Johnson (William Preston and the Allegheny Patriots. 
Blacksburg, Virginia: Walpa Publishing, 1976, p. 310) states that a 
daughter of William Preston and his wife Susanna Smith related that "no 
portrait of either" of her parents "was ever made." That statement 
raises some question as to the validity of the image published by F. B. 
Kegley.

Could some subscriber to this list, or perhaps a librarian with Virginia 
image bank access, identify the source of the silhouette and, more 
specifically, confirm (or deny) that it pictures Colonel William Preston?

Thanks in advance. Off list reply correspondence will be welcomed.

Jim Glanville
Retired chemist.
201 Graves Avenue
Blacksburg, VA 24060-5305

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