Maine Historical Society and the P.D. Merrill Charitable Trust award two research fellowships for the 2024-25 P.D. Merrill Research Fellowship.
PORTLAND — Maine Historical Society is pleased to announce the selection of two researchers to receive the 2024-25 P.D. Merrill Research Fellowship. The fellowship, now in its second year, provides independent scholars, Ph.D. candidates, and holders of the Ph.D. or equivalent an opportunity to explore collections at MHS related to the business and economic history of Maine, New England, and/or the Canadian Maritimes.
C. Ian Stevenson, Ph.D., acting director, Preservation Studies Program, Boston University, and Joseph Yauch, Brandeis University, will each receive a $2,500 stipend to support 60 hours of research in the collections of MHS between June 1 and March 31, 2025.
Stevenson’s project, tentatively titled “Destination ‘Magic Town’: Capitalism, Corporate Branding, and the Trackside Architecture of the Portland & Rumford Falls Railway, 1890-1895,” explores the use of vernacular train station designs as early forms of corporate branding to attract investors to a new industrial city in the Maine woods. Yauch’s project, “Felling Native Forests, Defending Indigenous Sovereignty: Industrialization, Natural Resource Extraction, and Penobscot People in 19th-Century Northern Maine,” combines business history with environmental, labor, and Native history as he investigates relationships between industrial logging companies, colonial governance, and Native sovereignty in the 19th- and early 20th-century United States.
The P.D. Merrill Research Fellowship was endowed by the P.D. Merrill Charitable Trust, established by Paul Douglas (“P.D.”) Merrill (1944-2007), a renowned Portland business leader and owner/CEO of the Merrill’s Marine Terminal.
