Margaret Wintz Research Fellowship at Sandy Spring Museum
2012 Competition
Sandy Spring Museum invites applications from masters and doctoral students for the first Margaret Wintz Research Fellowship in summer 2012. Candidates working on a master’s thesis are eligible for a $500 fellowship; candidates working on a doctoral thesis for a $1000 fellowship. The Museum will be open for Wintz fellows daily 9am-4pm and both Saturday and Sunday 12-4pm. Temporary housing can be requested, though it cannot be guaranteed.
What can I study at Sandy Spring Museum?: Sandy Spring Museum preserves and interprets the history of a prosperous farming community founded in
1728 and situated within the market and residential orbit of both Washington DC and Baltimore, MD. Farming continued to be the mainstay of the local economy until the 1970s, offering a fascinating laboratory of agricultural history. Thanks in large measure to strong and enduring Quaker roots, this small community offered innovative leadership to Montgomery County and Maryland over several centuries, in technology, agriculture, social justice (including anti-slavery and women’s rights), social capital, education, and contemporary land use and planning.
Sandy Spring began as a tobacco-growing area worked by enslaved labor.
In 1780, Sandy Spring Quakers began manumitting enslaved people, a process completed by 1820 and giving rise to a strong, land-based free African-American community, one of the few to survive both the 19th and 20th century. Sandy Spring farmers transitioned to wheat, corn, orchards and dairy. Starting in 1801, Sandy Spring pioneered in the development of sustainable agricultural practices, including soil amendment, crop rotation, and, in the present day, no tillage and water preservation policies. Sandy Spring also maintains a series of social clubs, most founded in the mid-19th century and several (four farmer’s clubs, Horticulture, Neighbors, Home Interest, Wednesday Club, and the Women’s Mutual Improvement Association), still extant and meeting monthly. Club minutes in the Museum archives detail civic and social capital formation over more than a century, from multiple gender and racial points of view, offering an unparalleled research opportunity for social, economic, environmental, and gender historians. Scholars interested in Quaker history will also find extensive archival and artifactual material in the Museum’s collection, including family histories, as well as preserved farm houses still owned by descendants of founding Quaker families. The nearby Sandy Spring Friends Meeting also maintains an archive that would be available to Wintz fellows.
How to apply: Applicants should send a 2-3 page research proposal and CV, along with a scholarly writing sample, and one letter of recommendation from the student’s thesis/dissertation director.
Fellowship applications are due by December 1, 2011 and awards will be made by January 31, 2012. Fellowships may be tenanted for 2-4 weeks between June 5 and September 1, 2012.
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