Angela Oonk

Director of Development

The camp environment often made culinary endeavors challenging for Civil War soldiers as described by George Starbird, but these soldiers at Fort Monroe, Virginia, made it look easy for photographer George Stacy.

How often have you given someone a present, and when they gushed over it, you’ve said, “Oh, it’s nothing”? In modesty we trivialize these important gestures, perhaps even replacing “you’re welcome” with “forget it.” George Starbird (1843–1907) didn’t see a small gift of tea as trivial while serving with the 1st New York Mounted Rifles during the Civil War. In his letter home dated February 19, 1863, he recounted torrential rain that left the military camp a sea of mud and a “little brook began to course its path directly under the place I had made my bunk.” Despite the weather conditions and lack of sleep, he wrote, “Tell Mrs. Banks that when I make [a] dipper of tea it makes me think how she would laugh to see me stooping over hot fire, burning fingers in doing it. Tell her she is ever so kind to send it to me and that I do appreciate it and I’ll go now and make me [a] cup.”

Taking the time to give a gift connects the giver and receiver, and this is why we call our supporters the Clements Library Associates. Through your thoughtfulness, you not only help the Clements thrive, but you also forge a closer bond and become part of a community. 

Last year gifts of $100 or less totaled almost $35,000. Some donors choose to sign up for monthly giving which adds up quickly; giving over a number of years also makes a huge impact. I am humbled by the number of donors who have been supporting the Clements consistently for 50 years (or more, the current database only shows gifts back to 1975). In particular George F. and Charles L. have been steadfast in their commitment, missing nary a year! This is no small feat. After all, life is busy and letters are pushed to the side and forgotten. We feel the importance of each of these kind gestures, no matter the size, and are grateful for the community that supports the Clements Library.

Moving from her home in Maine to a farm in Lakeville, Minnesota, upon her marriage, Ann Brackett’s diaries demonstrate the importance of the maintaining family ties through correspondence and gifts, large and small. Indeed, the Ann M. Brackett diaries were a gift to the William L. Clements Library from the late Dr. Duane Norman Diedrich.

Staff News

Clements Library Director Paul Erickson completed his term as President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic at the society’s annual conference in Philadelphia in late July. SHEAR is the primary scholarly organization for scholars working on the history of the U.S. between 1775 and 1861.

Isaac Burgdorf joins the Development team as the new Marketing Coordinator. Isaac is a 2024 graduate from the University of Michigan School of Information and has worked at the Clements as a Manuscripts Assistant since 2022. We are excited that Isaac is now a full-time member of the library staff, and look forward to working with Isaac as he continues to promote the library and its materials through social media and outreach.

The start of a new semester means the opportunity to work with some of the incredibly talented and motivated students from the University of Michigan! This fall, we will be joined by:

• Theresa Azemar – School of Information
• Diana Baxter – School of Information
• Milo Boatwright – LS&A
• Ellie Franklin – School of Information
• Samantha Huck – LS&A
• Anastasiya Ilkiv – LS&A
• Bela Kellog – LS&A
• Madison Lay – Ross School of Business
• Naomi Yu – School of Information

In Memoriam

Richard C. “Dick” Marsh

Photo courtesy of the Society for American Music

2024-2025 William L. Clements Library Fellows

Long-Term Fellowships

Jacob M. Price Dissertation Fellowship (2 months)

Ryan Langton, PhD Candidate in History, Temple University; “Negotiating the Endless Mountains: Networked Diplomacy along the Eighteenth-Century Trans-Appalachian Frontier”

Dorothy and Herman Miller Fellowship in Great Lakes History (2 months)

Ramya Swayamprakash, Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, Grand Valley State University; “Islands in the Straits: Technology, Transformation, and Remarking Nature along the Detroit River 1860-1960”

Ben Pokross, Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow, Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum, University of Tulsa; “Writing History in the Nineteenth-Century Great Lakes”

Short-Term Fellowships (1 month)

Norton Strange Townshend Short-Term Fellowship

Ashley Reed, Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech; “Spiritualist Religion in American Women’s Writing, 1848-1910”

Ben Bascom, Assistant Professor of English, Ball State University; “Eccentric Queers: Sexuality and Debility in Nineteenth-Century America”

Javier Eduardo Ramírez López, PhD Candidate in History, El Colegio de México; “The Great American Bookseller: The Formation and Dispersion of Henry Stevens’s Mexican Collection”

Johann Neem, Professor of History, Western Washington University; “The Daily Life of American Democracy, 1780s–1850s”

Alfred A. Cave Fellowship

Emily Dixon Magness, PhD Candidate in History, William & Mary; “If you had paid attention, you would know”: The Sacred World of Eighteenth-Century CherokeeAnglo Politics”

Howard H. Peckham Fellowship on Revolutionary America

Ronald Angelo Johnson, Associate Professor of History, Baylor University; “Mutual Entanglements: Transracial Ties Between Haitians and Revolutionary Americans”

John W. Shy Memorial Fellowship

Blake McGready, PhD Candidate in History, Graduate Center, City University of New York; “Making Nature’s Nation: The Revolutionary War and Environmental Interdependence in New York, 1775–1783”

John M. Price Short-Term Fellowship

Blake Grindon, Patrick Henry Scholar, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, Johns Hopkins University; “The Death of Jane McCrea: Sovereignty and Violence in the Northeastern Borderlands of the American Revolution”

Julius S. Scott III Fellowship in Caribbean and Atlantic History

Rachel Tils, PhD Candidate in History, University of Chicago; “Marketing in the System: Policing the Antillean Internal Economy. 1763–1807”

Phoebe Labat, PhD Candidate in History, Brown University; “Natural Disasters in the French Atlantic, 1624–1843” 

Richard and Mary Jo Marsh Short-Term Fellowship

David R. Whitesell, Independent Scholar; “A Bibliographical Catalog of Pre-1901 American and Canadian Photographically Illustrated Books

MacManus & Co. Fellowship

Henry Knight Lozano, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Exeter; “Reptile Dominion: A Human-Reptile History of Florida in the Nineteenth Century”

Ephemera Society of America Fellowship

Alexandra Cade, PhD Candidate in History, University of Delaware; “Schottische at the Spa; Waltz at the Waterfall: Sensory Performance of National Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Tourism”

Brian Leigh Dunnigan Fellowship in the History of Cartography

Carli LaPierre, PhD Candidate in History, Queen’s University; “From Where We Stand: Visual Imagery and Understandings of Space in EighteenthCentury Northeastern North America”

Week-Long Fellowships (1 week)

Richard & Mary Jo Marsh Fellowship

Ryan Morini, Director of Community Oral History Collections, Doy Leale McCall Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama; “The Unsettled Life of an Eastern Nevada Ghost Town”

David B. Kennedy and Earhart Fellowship

Matthew Skic, Curator of Exhibitions, Museum of the American Revolution; “Loyalists at War: The Story of the Queen’s Rangers”

Brian Leigh Dunnigan Fellowship in the History of Cartography

Alanna Loucks, PhD Candidate in History, Queen’s University; “Imagined Imperial Spaces: Comparing Cartographic Representations of the Great Lakes Region in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century”

Mary G. Stange Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers

Tina Villadolid, Independent Scholar; “More Pieces of the Archipelago: Connectivity between UM and the Philippines”

Ruth Lopez, Independent Scholar; “Finding Miss Jennie Curtis”

Alexander Ames, Director of Outreach & Engagement, The Rosenbach Museum & Library / Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation; “’The Sound of Harps Angelical’: A Celtic Harpist Residency at the William L. Clements Library”

Jacob M. Price Week-Long Fellowship

Emily Lampert, PhD Candidate in History, Rice University; “The Virginian Atlantic: Virginia in the British Imagination, 1780–1860”

Jack Werner, PhD Candidate in History, University of Maryland, College Park; “Ableist Empire: U.S Colonialism, Disability, and Labor in the United States and the Philippines, 1898–1916”

James E. Laramy Fellowship in American Visual Culture

Mary Kate Robbett, PhD Candidate in History, Northwestern University; “Collecting the War: Civil War Relics, 1865-1915”

Jeremy McLaughlin, PhD Candidate in Information, University of Wisconsin – Madison; “A Most Familiar Form(e): Textual and Visual Knowledge Transmission in the Cultural Astronomy of Colonial North America”

Norton Strange Townshend Week-Long Fellowship

Jess Libow, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Program, Haverford College; “Obscure Conditions: Visualizing Health in Nineteenth-Century American Literature”

Jordan T. Watkins, Assistant Professor of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University; “Slavery and Religion in the Nineteenth-Century”

Ashley Rattner, Assistant Professor of English, Jacksonville State University; “The Crass Materiality of Utopia: Publishing Communitarian Reform in Nineteenth-Century America”

Clayton Lewis Fellowship in American Culture

Emily Schollenberger, PhD Candidate in Art History, Temple University; “Shifting Sediments: Photography, Memory, and Imperial Landscape”

Introduction to Archival Research Fellowship (1 week)

Forty-Three Foundation Fellowship

Leah Driehorst, Undergraduate, University of Michigan; “Paradox of Progress: Uncovering the Problematic Views of Late 19th-Century American Reformers”

Digital Fellowship (1 week)

Jacob M. Price Digital Fellowship

Surekha Davies, Independent Researcher; “Humans: A Monstrous History” 

American Trust for the British Library and William L. Clements Library Fellowship (2 weeks)

Dannie Brice, PhD Candidate in History, Duke University; “Imperial Grounds: Coffee, Entangled Empires, and the British Military Occupation of Saint-Domingue, 1789–1833”