Worth Bailey Papers, 1939-1980

Worth Bailey graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked as a museum and research assistant at Jamestown and Yorktown before he was hired by the MVLA in 1939 as a museum technician. His first project at Mount Vernon was creating a catalog of museum collections with photographs and updated information gathered from his research. Bailey wrote articles on Mount Vernon’s collections and history, and assisted with several other MVLA publications. His talent as a woodblock artist remains one of his most recognized contributions to Mount Vernon. His beautiful woodblock prints of the estate’s buildings, artifacts, and scenery were used in MVLA brochures and souvenir booklets. The booklet Christmas with the Washingtons, first published in 1948, was illustrated by Worth Bailey and written by his wife Olive Bailey. He resigned from Mount Vernon in 1951 to work as the Curator at Woodlawn. He died in 1980.