For the past six years, the Sallie Markham Michie Trust has awarded funding to a graduate student within the University of North Carolina’s History Department. Sallie Markham Michie established the trust before her death in 1993, and it continues to be overseen by the Orange County Daughters of the American Revolution and the Magna Carta Dames Society, in both of which she was an active member. Over 25 years after its creation, the trust continues her legacy.
The Trust’s chair, Sarah Snow, outlined in an interview that “the intent [of the trust] is to challenge students to research and publish on the era of the American Revolution, the British/American colonial era, and/or the tradition of rights and liberties established by the Magna Carta.” Thus, scholarships are awarded annually from the Sallie Markham Michie Trust to select applicants whose research fulfills the goals of the Trust. Beyond her associations with the Daughters of the American Revolution and Magna Carta Dames Society, Mrs. Markham was also a longtime resident of Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Thus, she prioritized the allocation of scholarships from her trust to residents of Orange County.
Despite the Revolutionary-era focus of these scholarships, past recipients from the department have applied their funds to projects on Latin America, Europe, and modern America, as well as early North America. Steven Weber, who received a scholarship in 2017, was able to apply the funding toward his project on the coverage of the American Revolution by the French press, exploring the legacy and impact of the American Revolution beyond the continent. The Sallie Markham Michie Trust scholarship allowed Steve to take his first major research trip to Paris, where he worked in the city’s diplomatic archives to develop the direction of his dissertation. Beyond the scholarship itself, he valued “the ability to present my Master’s work to a public audience at the DAR meeting,” which “was really helpful in thinking about what my main contributions were and how they could be presented to a non-academic audience as significant and interesting.”
Another past recipient, Ariel Wilks, applied her scholarship funds to research closer to the American continent. The Daughters of the American Revolution and Magna Carta Dames Society awarded Ariel a scholarship in 2019 for her dissertation project, which investigated the role of privateers in the professionalization of the American Navy, especially in the amphibious warfare of the American Revolution and War of 1812. She noted that “my project fits the DAR goals as it very much centers around developing the scholarship of early America and focuses on an area within that scholarship that is not heavily emphasized.” With the support of the Sallie Markham Michie Trust, Ariel has been able to focus on developing her research topic and comfortably plan to begin her archival research this spring.
In 2021, eight graduate students applied for scholarships from the Sallie Markham Michie Trust, and the department looks forward to seeing how the recipients are able to support their own research, as well as the goals of Sallie Markham Michie, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Magna Carta Dames with the support gifted by the scholarships.
-Nicole Harry