Kevin:

It's funny you should pose this question.  I have just recently been
reviewing some of those documents in conjunction with a biography I was writing up for
the Virginia Dictionary.

Your suggested sources are partly right and partly wrong.

The majority of the Nicholson-Blair papers in VMHB are from volume 51 of the
New York State Archives in the New York State Library, Albany.  (This by the
way is clearly cited in 7 VMHB 153.)  Those papers have been microfilmed and
are available at CWF in the Rockefeller Library -- and perhaps at other
locations as well.  FYI the is a rather large collection of Nicholson Papers at the
Rockefeller Library as well.

As for the Gantner contributions in 19W(2) and following -- The bulk of those
are from the transcripts of the Fulham Palace "Virginia Papers."  (See
19W(2)147 -- note.)  Fulham Palace, of course is the seat of the Bishop of London
who had immediate oversight of the Anglican Church in all of the colonies.  Many
of these can be seen in reprint in Perry's _Historical Collections of the
American Colonial Church_, volume I, Virginia -- reprint by Willow Bend Books,
Westminster, MD, 2001.

All of the Virginia related materials from Fulham Palace are included in the
Virginia Colonial Records Project with microfilms available at CWF, LVa, VHS
and the Alderman Library, UVa.  They are summarized in Survey Reports 575, 576,
577, and 578, all of which are available online at LVa.

There are a multitude of additional Nicholson, Blair, and CWM papers
scattered throughout the Colonial Office Papers in the PRO in London.  These of course
are all included in the VCRP.  I can't recommend too highly the online search
capability of the VCRP Survey Reports at LVa!  Eventually, of course you will
need to go to one of the four participating repositories, or try to get the
film via ILL from LVa.

As you speculated, there are also many CWM papers to be found at Swem, but
few of these have been filmed, so far as I know -- but then I haven't tried to
use them in twenty years, so they may be more accessible now.

I hope this helps Kevin, and gets all of you document lovers out there back
to the repositories!

Good hunting.


Peter VV. Bergstrom, PhD
formerly Research Associate
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

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