Gale Family Library Legacy Research Fellowships

The Gale Family Library Legacy Research Fellowship Program is currently paused while we evaluate and revise the program. Please check back in Spring 2026 for news and updates!

The Minnesota Historical Society has been pleased to offer financial support to researchers through the Gale Family Library Legacy Research Fellowship Program since 2014. Each fellow receives a $3,500 award which is funded through the Minnesota Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. The award is issued in separate payments during the course of the year-long fellowship and only open to Minnesota residents.

This fellowship focuses on supporting independent scholars and researchers (defined as not eligible for funding through employment at academic institutions) engaged in Minnesota-related research/scholarship drawing on Gale Family Library resources and collections, adding to the body of knowledge and interpretation of Minnesota’s history (pre- and post-statehood) and culture.

Applicants of diverse backgrounds and voices and those focusing on lesser-known and underrepresented topics are especially encouraged. We encourage proposals for projects that make connections between past experiences and the times in which we were living. Successful past applicants highlighted Gale Family Library resources and collections when creating their final submission. During the year-long fellowship, participants are encouraged to collaborate with each other and are supported by library staff in successfully researching at the Library.

When applying, applicants will submit a project narrative of 1,000 words or less, including the following aspects of their proposal: purpose, goals, and objectives; connection to Minnesota’s history and cultural heritage; research design and methods; plan for project outcome (published book or article, manuscript, etc.); a dissemination strategy for sharing project work and a brief but relevant bibliography or references.

To support their proposal, applicants are asked to submit a curriculum vitae/resume limited to two pages and including any relevant experience or focus in their area of interest. They will also submit two letters of support which do not need to be written by academic sources or employers. Anyone with knowledge of the importance of the project, the applicant's familiarity with the research topic, and/or the ability of the applicant to complete and make useful their research findings can write a letter of support.

Undergraduates are not eligible to apply to this fellowship program and it is not available for undergraduate work. Graduate students are eligible to apply if research funding/support is not available through their academic institution.

When choosing awardees, the selection committee focused on the following demonstrated criteria:

• Compliance with application requirements.
• Heavy reliance on the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society.
• A deep and direct connection to Minnesota history and cultural heritage.
• A contribution that advances knowledge or fills a scholarly gap in Minnesota history and cultural heritage.
• Evidence of sound research intentions and practices.
• Reasonable project scope within the award timeframe.
• Reasonable proposed outcomes and dissemination plan.
• That the proposal will support work conducted through/at the Gale Family Library by using the resources of the Gale Family Library and MNHS collections.

Deliverables of the program include:

• A presentation during the award period for MNHS staff, volunteers, and interns, summarizing their research.
• Fellows writing and submitting a MNopedia article (subject to editor approval for publication) or short article to be cataloged in the Gale Family Library collection based on their research in order to receive the final payment of the fellowship award.
• Any submission to MNHS Press allows the Press the right of first refusal on manuscripts created with Legacy Research Fellowships; with the possibility of negotiating an exception.
• Public presentations of research are highly encouraged and may be recorded for future outreach with awardee permission.

Past awardees

2024

• Alison Bergblom Johnson: The Patient Records of 12 Female Patients Transferred to Fergus Falls State Hospital on Valentines Day 1899 as a Window into Physician’s Beliefs and Practices
• Ralph Brown: St. Paul’s WSCO: Building Democracy in a Multicultural Urban Community
• Kim Heikkila: ’Everyone had a place’: African American Girls’ Sports at Oxford Recreation Center, 1960-1975
• Louis Johnston: James Ford Bell: Insights from His Diaries, 1907 to 1960
• Jessie Merriam: The Legacy of Minnesota’s Wetlands: An Environmental History -- not completed
• Karen Sieber: Moses Dickson and the Underground Railroad in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1849-1858

2023

• Eric Hankin-Redmon: The Neighborhood Press and Urban Redevelopment in Minneapolis-St. Paul, 1970-2000
• Margaret Miles: Shelter: An Origin Story
• Brayden Rothe: Minnesota Remembering the Maine: Cuba & The Philippines in Minnesota Memory & Historiography
• Emily Shepard: 120 Years as an Urban Gathering Place: The Development of Saint Paul’s Cherokee Park
• Jonathan Soucek: Rainbows Through the Storm: Anti-Poverty Activism, Racial Rainbow Rhetoric, and the Impact of Multiracial Coalition Building in Minnesota on National Politics
• Kathleen Thomas: History of Rural Women’s Clubs, Minnesota, Pre- and Post-WWII

2022

• Shayna Allen: Biography of Carl Ross
• Alison Bergblom Johnson: The Letters of Lydia B. Angier
• Greg Gaut: Minnesota During the Great War
• Jennifer Kleinjung: Partisan Politics & Public Health in a Pandemic: A Close Look at the AIDS Crisis in Minnesota History
• Fionn Mallon: “I Think About The Future”: Athelstan Spilhaus and the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC)
• Christine Stark: Mining and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Northern Minnesota- not completed
• Tom Weber: MINNESOTA ‘76: A historical research of Minnesota’s role in the 1976 presidential election

2021

• No awardees in 2021 due to circumstances related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2020

• Ariel Butler: 'A Great Wrong': The August Ruther Case and Anti-German Sentiment During World War I
• Ying Diao: The Taste of Migration: Southeast Asian Kitchen in Post-Vietnam Minnesota
• Katie Himanga: Anna B Underwood’s 1871–1929 Involvement with the Federation of Women’s Clubs in Minnesota
• Katya Oicherman: Bed Linen in Minnesota: From the Private Armoire to the Department Store
• Steve Parliament: Competing Utopias: Visions and Conflict in the Redevelopment of Cedar Riverside area of Minneapolis, 1950–2000
• Sebastian Renfield: The People’s Highways: Minnesotans’ Experiences of the State Trunk Highway System, 1921–1940
• Emily Shepard: Inmate Labor in the Stillwater Prison Industries, 1891–1914
• Katie Thornton: The Vote or the Bottle? Suffrage, Temperance, and the Balancing Act of Womanhood in Early 20th Century Minnesota

2019

• Heather Carroll, Minneapolis: Minnesota’s Art and Feminism in the 1970s
• Patricia Cavanaugh, St. Paul: The Early Development of Watershed-based Governance in Minnesota
• Steven Dornfeld, Woodbury: 1969 Bus Strike: A Critical Turning Point
• Chris Hommerding, Minneapolis: The Otherness of Ober: Queerness, Wilderness, and Place-Making
• Louis Johnston, St. Cloud: The Work of the Minnesota Resources Commission, 1939-1947
• Jessica Milgroom, Elk River: Access to Wild Rice
• William Millikan, Minneapolis: Financing the Development of Minnesota with Indian Lands: The Homestead Act
• Barbara Scott, St. Paul: European American Women at Nineteenth-Century Fort Snelling

2017

• Carol Ahlgren, Crystal, MN: The Jefferson Highway in Minnesota
• Krista Finstad Hanson, St. Paul, MN: Assisting Japanese-Americans from Resettlement Camps
• Cory Haala, Inver Grove Heights, MN: The Many DFLs in Rudy Perpich’s Minnesota: Grassroots Liberalism in the Age of Reagan
• Michael Lansing, Minneapolis, MN: The Cradle of Carbohydrates: Minneapolis and the Making of the World's Food
• Cecelia McKeig, Federal Dam, MN: History of Ah-Gwah-Ching Sanatorium Focusing on Cultural and Social Interaction
• Joshua Preston, Minneapolis, MN: The Early 20th Century Professionalization of Nursing in Minnesota
• Alan Slacter, Plymouth, MN: The Visionary, the Hero and the Russian Jews: September 1, 1894 in Brook Park, Minnesota
• Barb Sommer, Mendota Heights, MN: The Little-Known History of Romansh Immigration to Minnesota

2016

• Johannes Allert: In the Shadow of the Great War: Minnesotans Reflections and Remembrances of the War to End All Wars
• Greg Gaut: Fighting on the Home Front: The Minnesota Home Guard in World War I
• Katherine Goertz: Art of the North: Visual Arts in Minnesota
• William Millikan: Financing the Development of Minnesota with Indian Lands: Public Schools and the Lumber and Mining Industries
• Tamatha Perlman: Fallen: Murder, Madness and Unrequited Love in 19th Century Minneapolis
• Marjorie Savage: Frances Andrews: Minnesota Philanthropist and Conservationist
• Thomas Shaw: Post US-Dakota War of 1862 Forts of Southern Minnesota

2015

• Kirsten Delegard: City of Light and Darkness: The Making of a Progressive Metropolis in Minneapolis, a comprehensive history of Minneapolis, post-1940
• Mary Krugerud: History of tuberculosis treatment at Minnesota’s sanatoriums
• Eric Colleary: Social history and cookbooks, based on research into the James J. Hill House kitchens
• David LaVigne: Ethnic and multi-ethnic public commemorations on Minnesota’s Iron Range from the 1960s to the 1980s

2014

• William Millikan: Indian lands and the financing development of Minnesota's industrial, transportation, and mining empires
• Lois Glewwe: Jane Williamson and mission schools
• Howard Vogel: Rev. Stephen R. Riggs and his role in the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux of 1851
• Ellen Manovich: Urban renewal and neighborhood change in the Minneapolis University Districts in 19th and 20th centuries
• Andrea Klein Bergman: Socio-cultural integration of Tibetan Americans in Minnesota
• Therese Cain: Analyzing the voting patterns of Swift County, MN, from 1932 to present
• Bruce White: Biography of Henry M. Rice