Thomas Jay McCahill III Fellowship 2025-2026 Announcement

The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati is pleased to announce that the 2025 Thomas Jay McCahill III Fellowship has been awarded to Christine DeLucia, PhD (associate professor of history at Williams College). The fellowship is made possible by a grant from the Thomas Jay McCahill III SOCNH Foundation and is offered in collaboration with the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, Inc., and the American Independence Museum in Exeter, New Hampshire. The Thomas Jay McCahill III Fellowship supports advanced research on colonial British America and the early American republic.

The fellowship supports DeLucia’s research for a project titled “Land, Diplomacy, and Power in the Revolutionary Northeast.” This historical work examines the centrality of land for diverse eighteenth-century communities across the Northeast, including areas claimed and contested by New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. The project traces multiple facets of place—such as sovereign Indigenous homelands, colonial state land grants and private property and land speculation schemes—to assess interlocking systems of negotiation, trade, conflict and peace-making, with focus in the American Revolutionary era as well as a longer arc of the eighteenth century. DeLucia’s research also accounts for these histories’ influences upon practices of knowledge production and historical memory.

Christine DeLucia

Christine DeLucia

“I deeply appreciate this support from the Thomas Jay McCahill III Fellowship for research in archival and material culture collections of many kinds in the Northeast and in Washington, D.C. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time learning with and critically engaging a wide range of original materials and making connections with people and organizations closely connected to these histories. I look forward to bringing this work into my scholarship and teaching,” shared Professor DeLucia.

“The Society of the Cincinnati is delighted to welcome Dr. DeLucia as the inaugural Thomas Jay McCahill III Fellow,” said Andy Morse, executive director of the Society and its American Revolution Institute. “Our research library collection will render valuable insights to her work which will illuminate a complex and worthy facet of American history.”

The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, Inc., seeks to ensure that the history and legacy of the American Revolution in understood and appreciated. The Institute houses one of the world’s leading research libraries on the revolutionary period and provides learning opportunities for teachers, students, scholars and lifelong learners through museum exhibitions and public programs.