Hey all! I've been neglecting my blog. My responsibilities to my fellowship at the George Tyler Moore Center occupy me. Each year the center offers a two-month (June-July) position to a graduate student to work for them and do their own research. Promising historians will appreciate its location in Shepherdstown, in Jefferson County in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. It is literally ten minutes drive - or thirty minutes by bicycle if you prefer - from the Antietam Battlefield across the Potomac in Maryland. Gettysburg and Manassas are each an hour away by car, with Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness within two hours. The National Archives in Washington, D.C. are also within easy reach. Mark Snell runs the center. He teaches Civil War and military history at Shepherd University, a small state school. I highly recommend taking a battlefield tour with him. Last week, we went to Gettysburg. It was a thrill to watch a master scholar and guide put the battle and the war into many different perspectives. The other staff here, Denise, Tom and Al, are great too. We're heading to Petersburg at the end of June.
So far - and I'm only three weeks into the program - I've been able to help them and further my own work. The Shepherd University Library has a substantial collection of microfilm. Their own resources of primary materials into West Virginia's Civil War have helped me immensely. I like to joke that at night (fellows live in their building) they surround me with such a wide range of Civil War books that it's like being a kid in a candy store or a graduate student's worst nightmare! These sources are necessary. I must produce and publicly present an original paper as part of the program requirements. Fortunately this will advance my dissertation research a great deal.
The pictures below are of the center itself on Shepherdstown's main street, and only part of the many books in the center's library.
So far - and I'm only three weeks into the program - I've been able to help them and further my own work. The Shepherd University Library has a substantial collection of microfilm. Their own resources of primary materials into West Virginia's Civil War have helped me immensely. I like to joke that at night (fellows live in their building) they surround me with such a wide range of Civil War books that it's like being a kid in a candy store or a graduate student's worst nightmare! These sources are necessary. I must produce and publicly present an original paper as part of the program requirements. Fortunately this will advance my dissertation research a great deal.
The pictures below are of the center itself on Shepherdstown's main street, and only part of the many books in the center's library.
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