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National Archives Regional Residency Fellowship

The National Archives has selected the recipients for the 2011 Regional Residency Fellowships, a new program that is generously supported by the Foundation for the National Archives. The Fellowship recipients will receive assistance making it possible to conduct significant original research using records at National Archives locations in Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Seattle. This program is intended to foster scholarly research in the many holdings of the National Archives located outside of the Washington, DC area and to increase awareness of less-used or overlooked archival records.

2011 Recipients:

Wayne Bodle
Anthony E. Carlson
Meghan Donahue
Keala Hagmann
Kelli McCoy

Each fellowship recipient receives a $3,000.00 stipend to assist with travel and research expenses. The products of the fellowship will be the completion of a research project that results in a publishable work product, a short report for publication by the National Archives that describes the research experience, and a staff briefing about the holdings used.

Wayne Bodle, National Archives at Philadelphia

Wayne Bodle's research topic is "Bullion and Bureaus: A 1795 Silver Crisis at the United States Mint." During his residency at the National Archives, Dr. Bodle will unravel the story of the early U.S. Mint and its ties to the early Federal government, commerce, diplomacy, and wartime France. Specifically, he will examine the source of silver bullion used by the U.S. Mint to produce one-dollar coins in Philadelphia in the 1790, on the hunch that the silver may have been brought from France and used in part as payment for the U.S.'s post-Revolutionary war debt. As the Mint was located in Philadelphia and the sole issuer of U.S. coinage during the 1790s, the subject matter concerns local matters in Philadelphia as well as national issues. Bodle's research will focus on the Records of the U.S. Mint from the 1790s and early 1800s which are held by the National Archives at Philadelphia.

Bodle received his doctorate in American History at the University of Pennsylvania and has been teaching at Indiana University of Pennsylvania since 1998. A specialist in early American history, he is the author of numerous books and articles on the role of the Middle Colonies in the Atlantic world and has contributed to the development of many professional conferences and seminar groups.

Anthony E. Carlson, National Archives at Kansas City

Anthony E. Carlson's research topic will be to expand his PhD dissertation into a book. His dissertation evaluates American wetlands policy from the American Revolution to the New Deal. He plans to utilize numerous records at the National Archives at Kansas City to take advantage of the rich primary resources there relating to drainage and levee districts. This research will include an examination of drainage issues on Native American lands as well.

Anthony E. Carlson received his PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. His dissertation was entitled, "Drain the Swamps for Health and Home: Wetlands Drainage, Land Conservation, and National Water Policy, 1850-1917." He has numerous other publications, on wetlands drainage, national water policy, national reclamation policy, and water conflicts. He has won numerous awards and honors, including the Edward E. Dale--A.M. Gibson Award for the outstanding history doctoral student in 2010 at the University of Oklahoma.

Meghan Donahue, National Archives at Atlanta

Meghan Donahue's research topic is "Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Becoming a Normal City," the story of how Oak Ridge goes from the Manhattan Project "secret city" to a civilian municipality. Using the records of the Atomic Energy Commission, she will start her research with the records of the Manhattan Engineering District, specifically the records of Roane Anderson Corporation who built and operated the civilian residences of Oak Ridge and then will focus on the civic, educational, and recreational records of Oak Ridge while it was operated by the Atomic Energy Commission until the late 1950s and its final transition into a citizen-run municipality.

Meghan Donahue is in the process of completing her Master's in Public History from the University of West Georgia (May 2011). Ms. Donahue's experience consists of work with the Georgia Humanities Council, the City of Bremen Museum Project, and the photographing and podcasting of the 2007 Summer Field Study: "Route 66 to the Atomic West: Western Cold War and Urban History."

Keala Hagmann, National Archives at Seattle

Keala Hagmann will be using tens of thousands of forest inventory "tally sheets" from records of the Klamath Indian Agency, which represent rare quantitative descriptions of historical forest structure and composition. Supplementing these "tally sheets" are correspondence, reports, and maps from the Klamath Indian Agency and the Portland Area Office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Descriptions of the dataset, analysis, and conclusions will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals of science, ecology, or forest management. As part of the research for her dissertation, Keala will use this uniquely spatially extensive dataset to quantify historical density and composition of these forests and then to correlate patterns in the spatial distribution of these variables with the topographic, soil characteristics and plant association variables used by resource managers in developing restoration plans.

Keala Hagmann is a graduate student at the School of Forest Resources, College of the Environment, University of Washington.
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Kelli McCoy, National Archives at Chicago

Kelli McCoy's research topic is on the Mann Act prosecutions in Chicago. During a time of rapid social change, this act helped to define and enforce certain gender roles and standards of appropriate sexual behavior. Kelli will be identifying Criminal Case Files from the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Chicago) that involved prosecutions of the Mann Act from 1910 through the 1930s. She plans to use her research experience to complete the revisions to her book manuscript and pursue publication.

Kelli McCoy is an Assistant Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. She received her PhD in history from the University of California, San Diego.

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