Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship: An Interview with Kayla Reeves (FSU History BA 2024)

My name is Kayla Reeves. I graduated in May 2024 with my BA in History from Florida State University. I completed an honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Kurt Piehler which focused on the workings of the Daughters of the American Revolution and United Daughters of the Confederacy in Thomasville, Georgia. During my gap year, I am working at a small law office in my hometown of Madison, Florida while applying to graduate schools to continue studying American history. I am particularly interested in religious history.

This past summer, I participated in a nine-week fellowship program at Historic Deerfield in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Historic Deerfield is an outdoor museum that interprets the history and culture of early New England and the Connecticut River Valley. The institution includes twelve antique homes dating from 1730 to 1850 as well as the Flynt Center of Early New England Life, a state-of-the-art museum facility.  I was first made aware of this opportunity by my honors thesis advisor, Dr. Piehler, and the program really appealed to me.

The fellowship allowed for an in-depth study of colonial material culture in New England. My historical focus so far has been primarily on the American South and more modern history, so looking at colonial history in Massachusetts pushed me a bit outside my normal range. The program provided an introduction to the museum world and to the way that historical objects can contribute to our understanding of the past, both for the public and for professionals in the field. As I had never been to New England before, this trip was exciting and eye-opening.

The fellowship program was all inclusive. It provided us with food, housing and travel. What was nice was that they selected fellows from both near and far. One of us came from Hong Kong, while another one lived in a town close by. We were seven summer fellows, and we lived together in one of the Deerfield historic homes. Each one of us had a bedroom, and we shared the kitchen and living room. We undertook a few day trips to other museums and historic sites, and at the end we spent a week travelling around New England visiting places like Plymouth, Concord and Salem.

The fellowship program was structured like an intensive college class. Most days began with lectures. The organizers brought in experts both from within and from outside of Historic Deerfield, who shared their specialized knowledge with us. The topics ranged from recognizing, restoring, and caring for textiles and furniture, to thematic accounts on, for example, religion in New England, or a lecture might be based on specific objects from within Historic Deerfield’s collection.

Besides lectures, the other focus during our stay was working on our research projects. We started with a couple of smaller projects that we presented to the group, and our work culminated in a substantial final project.

The very first project we worked on was a gravestone study. We each were assigned a historic person, and we had to find their grave in one of the cemeteries and discover as much as we could about their life. I was given Samuel Allen, who died in a local skirmish in the 1740s. His gravestone included a death’s head, a stylized skull with angel wings, which was fairly typical for the time and region. This assignment was intended to familiarize us with the Historic Deerfield archives and databases.

The second thing we did was an object study. The organizers laid out a series of historical objects on a table, and we each had to choose one and research its history in general and specifically that of our example. I selected a family register from the Van Horn family from the late 1700s/ early 1800s. This was a framed piece of paper listing the births, deaths and marriages of one family written in beautiful calligraphy with a lot of decorative elements. Registers were usually hung up in the family’s parlor and were fairly common in New England. I wrote a short paper about this.

My final research project that resulted in a 25-page paper was on church discipline in Deerfield’s 2nd Congregational Church between 1828 and 1848. I was very fortunate that the church records on which I based my project had only recently been donated to the collection, which meant that they had not been studied yet by other summer research fellows. Dr. Peter Thomas, a former professor from the University of Vermont, had looked into the records and was very generous in sharing his findings with me. This was a great help in starting my project. The church records were very detailed; they kept lists of all the excommunications and admonishments which resulted in public confessions during this time period. Besides writing a paper, I also gave a final presentation on the topic.

In addition to lectures and research, we also did a little bit of tour guiding in the homes that make up Historic Deerfield. The complex consists of a street populated with twelve historic houses plus a regular museum building. These houses were interpreted to show the lives of people from different time periods of Deerfield’s history, as well as different economic and social backgrounds. Most houses are from the colonial period. Each fellow was given two houses with whose history we had to familiarize ourselves and then lead some of the tours. I guided in the Frary House and the Williams House.  That was the main public-facing activity we did, and in the beginning, it was a bit nerve wracking. But the regular tour guides were always there to support us!

A typical day as a summer fellow would be having a lecture in the morning on a specific topic such as colonial firearms. The fact that these lectures were so in depth was fantastic. Normally, the lecturer ate lunch with us, and we could ask questions in a more informal setting. We might have another lecture in the afternoon, and after that we got to work on our own projects. All the lectures and projects were focused on Historic Deerfield. We learned so much and did so much in such a short time period- it was definitely important to stay on top of your work!

The fellowship broadened my horizons. Being able to do my research project on a religious topic confirmed my interest in religious history and my decision to pursue this in graduate school. The fellowship also introduced me to New England and its history and that was an amazing experience. After living nine weeks inside a museum, I can confirm that I am still very excited about doing History!

My advice to other students is: “Apply to a bunch of fellowships!” I applied to others and got rejected, and then Historic Deerfield accepted my application. Apply to many things, and if you get turned down, apply to more. You never know what the different programs are looking for, and how many people they need.

Finally, I want to give a big thank you to everyone at Historic Deerfield that made my experience so amazing! I would particularly like to thank Dr. Erika Gasser, the Director of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, as well as my other summer fellows, Elizabeth Sacktor, Jillian Gochinski, Tanyi Tseung, Willa Brosnihan, Haley Wrye, and Kimberly Chan.