Meet the 2024 Class of Institute Fellows!
Greg Brooking, Ph.D., social studies teacher, North Springs High School, Atlanta, Georgia, to conduct research for a biography of Henry Laurens (1724-1792), a leader of the revolutionary movement from South Carolina who served as president of the Continental Congress and U.S. minister to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War. (2024 Society of the Cincinnati of the State of South Carolina Fellowship)
Alexander Burns, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville, to support research for a book project, Firm Battalions and American Fire: The Continental Army and Military Europe, which places the tactical experiences of the Continental Army in a European context. (2024 North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship, in honor of Ellen McCallister Clark)
Justin Cherry, baker in residence at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, to examine the Baking Department that fed Washington’s army in the Mid-Atlantic and in particular the individuals who were baking and providing food to the troops, for a work project titled, “Unlikely Soldiers: The Bakers of Washington’s Army, 1778-1781.” (2024 Thomas Jay McCahill III New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati Foundation Scholarship)
Matthieu Haroux, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, to conduct research on the life and military philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, for his dissertation titled, Rochambeau ou le Gout du Service Arme de L’Etat. (2024 Frank Mauran Fellowship)
Trenton Cole Jones, Ph.D., associate professor of history, Purdue University, to analyze the little-known efforts of the British to incite Scottish Americans to join the loyalist cause for an upcoming book project titled, Tory Rising: Insurrection in the Revolutionary South. (2024 Keith Armistead Carr Fellowship)
James Kochan, M.A., independent researcher, to conduct research for a projected three-volume work on the uniforms of the Continental Army, 1775-1783, and specifically, on the uniforms worn by the troops from the Mid-Atlantic states. (2024 Tyree-Lamb Fellowship)
Blake McGready, Ph.D. candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY, to examine how war and independence affected revolutionaries’ environmental perceptions and how those attitudes shaped the Revolution for his dissertation, “Making Nature’s Nation: The Revolutionary War and Environmental Interdependence in New York, 1775-1783.” (2024 New York State Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
Anna McKay, Ph.D., Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Liverpool, to examine the experiences of prisoners of war during the American Revolution to understand prisoner experiences, identities and mobilities for an upcoming project titled, “Prisoners’ Progress: Imperial Circulations of War Captives.” (2024 Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
Eli Merritt, M.D., M.A., assistant research professor, Vanderbilt University, to examine civic virtue in the political and military realms, focusing on the Society of the Cincinnati and Continental Army for a course titled, “How American Democracy Thrives.” (2024 Robert Girard Carroon Fellowship)
Ross Nedervelt, Ph.D., adjunct professor of history, Florida International University, to conduct research for a book, The Border-seas of a New British Empire: Security, Imperial Reconstitution, and the British Atlantic Islands in the Age of the American Revolution, which argues that the Americans’ inability to wrest control of Bermuda and the Bahamas from the British undermined the newly independent United States’ autonomy in the western Atlantic in the decades following the Revolutionary War. (2024 Society of the Cincinnati of Maryland Library Fellowship)
Marcus Nevius, Ph.D., associate professor, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, Department of History, University of Missouri, to conduct research for a book, Internal Enemy of the Most Alarming Kind: Marronage and the Political Economy of Fear in the British Atlantic in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, a history of how imperial agents and early republicans responded to marronage—the escape of enslaved people to hidden camps and communities that was a pervasive form of resistance in the era of the Revolution. (2024 Leland Madison Park Library Fellowship)
Kieran O’Keefe, Ph.D., assistant professor of history, Lyon College, to study the contributions of Horatio Gates to the American cause and his critical role at Saratoga in 1777 for an upcoming biography of Gates tentatively titled, Horatio Gates and the Pursuit of a Republican Revolution. (2024 Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
Robert Selig, Ph.D., author, historian and historical consultant, to continue his work transcribing and translating into English the extensive account of the Yorktown campaign in Dupleix de Cadignan’s manuscript journal for a scholarly, annotated edition. (2024 Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia Library Fellowship)
Matthew Skic, M.A., curator of exhibitions, Museum of the American Revolution, to conduct research on John Graves Simcoe, commander of the Queen’s Rangers, as well as how the Queen’s Rangers operated at the cutting edge of eighteenth-century warfare, in support of an upcoming exhibition. (2024 State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania Fellowship)
Amy Speckart, Ph.D., assistant to the director, Rare Books School at the University of Virginia, to research the military maneuvers by British- and American-led forces in North America in 1775 and 1776 and how Bet, an enslaved woman who emancipated herself, took advantage of the retreating Continental Army from New York. (2024 Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey Fellowship)