Each year The Colonial Dames of America makes awards to three institutions for annual graduate student fellowships:

Graduate Center of History at City University, New York

A grant to the Graduate Center of History at the City University of New York is awarded to a graduate student writing a dissertation on a topic in American history. The 2007-08 recipient is Carla J. DuBose, whose dissertation is entitled, The “Silent” Arrival:  the Second Wave of the Great Migration to New York City, 1940-1954. Her study focuses on the movement of African Americans to New York in the wake of the Depression and World War II, and its impact on the emerging urban civil rights movement.

Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

A grant to the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia supports a fellowship in historical editing. The fellowship offers a talented young graduate student the opportunity to build upon the skills that she or he has acquired as an Institute editorial apprentice during the academic year. The fellowship supports his or her continued editorial work throughout the summer following the apprenticeship and thus makes a significant contribution to the Institute’s ability to maintain the high standards for which all of its publications—the William and Mary Quarterly and book manuscripts—are known.

The recipient of the 2006-07 Colonial Dames of America Fellowship in Historical Editing is Maria Kane.  Maria came to William and Mary’s graduate program in American history from Howard University and Duke University.  She is one of the four young people who served as editorial apprentices at the Institute during the 2006-07 academic year. Of her selection as the Colonial Dames Fellow, Maria said, “This experience will afford me the opportunity to apprentice under the fine editors and scholars of the Institute, sharpen my copyediting and research skills, and broaden my historical appreciation of the colonial period.”  

Historic Jamestowne Field School, Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) 

A grant to the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) goes toward archaeological field work and research being done by graduate students at the Historic Jamestowne Field School in partnership with the University of Virginia.  During the Field School's six-week period of excavation in the summer of 2007, seventeen graduate students from six states uncovered remains of the 1607 James Fort, the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, and the adjoining 1608 James Town.  

In addition to learning methods and theories of fieldwork in American Historical Archaeology, students learned to identify and interpret 17th-century European and Native American artifacts, as well as investigate features directly related to James Fort (1607-1625).