Congratulations to this year’s award winners
The International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2024 Awards:
Henry H. Douglas Distinguished Service Award
From the award presentation:
The Award is named in honor of the founder of The Society, Mr. Henry H. Douglas, and is given to an individual who has made significant contributions over the years in furthering the Society’s goals through service, teaching, publications, and/or the promotion of historic preservation. In this high award, service is defined broadly in order to encompass all conceivable ways of contributing to the study of landscape, place and material culture, and may include (a) research and publications, (b) teaching, (c) development of curriculum materials, (d) grants received, (e) lobbying on behalf of historic preservation, (f) administrative work involving material culture, and (g) administrative, editorial, or other work in service to The International Society for Landscape, Place, & Material Culture.
This year’s recipient of the Henry H. Douglas Award is Dr. John Cross, professor emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin Oshgosh. Dr. Cross’s service to ISLPMC and the broader fields of folk and material culture studies are numerous, and I will mention only a few of them here. Dr. Cross earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geography from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He taught Geography at the University of Wisconsin Oshgosh beginning in 1979 until his retirement, including a stint as Department Chair and Dean. As a teacher, the synergy between physical and cultural geography is clear. He is the recipient of an NSF grant and he has served as a reviewer for the NSF. His books and articles can be found in all the major Geography journals, and the list spans 4 single-spaced pages of his CV. Recent research topics include changes in American dairy farming, barn quilt regions, and his recent books: “The Geography of Wisconsin” and “Ethnic Landscapes of America.” Dr. Cross has been a long-time active member of ISLPMC, contributing scholarship and service to the organization in ways too numerous to mention. In my tenure as Editor of MC, I can say that his recommendations and suggestions for themes and research topics have been of great help in maintaining the rigor of the journal. ISLMPC is a richer organization because he is part of us. Please join me in congratulating Dr. John Cross, 2024 recipient of the Henry H. Douglas Award.
W. Frank Ainsley Outstanding Service Award
From the award presentation:
The Ainsley Outstanding Service Award, established in 2012, is named in memory of long time member and geographer, Dr. W. Franklin Ainsley, who served as the Society’s Secretary-Treasurer for 20 years. ISLPMC presents this award, only periodically, to a member in recognition of outstanding service and dedication to the Society. The criteria for this award include long-time membership, as well as outstanding service and dedication to the organization through committee work, board membership, executive board membership, and/or planning annual meetings. This year, we’re delighted to honor an individual whose service and dedication to the Society as an organizational leader, supporter, and promoter has been instrumental to the success of the organization: Executive Director Wayne Brew.
Wayne earned a BS in Geology and a BS in Geography from Penn State, where he learned from Peirce Lewis – one of the true luminaries in cultural and historical geography – and later earned his master’s in geography from Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1984 he began working as a geologist for an environmental consulting firm, and during a 16-year career with this firm he travelled widely around the country organizing projects and writing technical reports. Wayne always had a deep desire to teach, and in 2000 he began teaching at Montgomery County Community College as a full-time instructor, where he earned tenure in 2005. At MCCC, he teaches cultural, urban, physical, and world regional geography, as well as earth science and a food and culture course. He also taught cultural and physical geography along with colloquia in the honors program.
Wayne joined the Society in 2004 and has attended and given a presentation at each annual meeting since. A consummate and keen observer of the cultural landscape, I always look forward to his presentations and the insights gleaned from epic summer road trips travelling some of the nation’s last remaining “blue highway” routes from beginning to end. Wayne’s leadership as Executive Director has been instrumental as the organization has navigated the early twenty-first century, including a name change, widening of the scope of the Society’s subject matter at conferences and within the Society’s flagship journal, and of course seeing our way through the Covid-19 Pandemic. His enthusiasm for the study of vernacular architecture, cultural landscapes, and artifacts is truly infectious. Won’t you now join me in congratulating this year’s W. Frank Ainsley award winner, Executive Director Wayne Brew.
Alan G. Noble Book Award
From the award presentation:
The International Society of Landscape, Place and Material Culture seeks to encourage and recognize books by authors regarding material culture in North America. Named for the renowned geographer, Allen G. Noble, the prize in his honor is granted annually for the best-edited book in the field published within two years of the award.
So, with that, I am pleased to announce that the winners of the 2022 Allen G. Noble Award for best-edited volume are: Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen, who edited Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond, published by Ohio University Press in 2023.
As with many books, this volume came about as a response to a previous work on the history of Ohio by a well-known author (who shall remain nameless — you'll have to read this book to find out who). That book provided a simplified history with heroic figures and a limited scope. To provide a broader perspective, Tim Anderson and Brian Schoen hosted a conference at Ohio University. The research presented at the conference opened vistas of a much more diverse representation of the variety of peoples involved in the settlement of the state. Settlement history is always much more complex than what is often taught.
Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond shares much of the interdisciplinary information that was presented at that conference a few years back. The book is divided into 3 sections: First Nations (Native American settlement and influence on settlement), American Foundations (government and commercial interests), and Alternative Histories (African-American influence, education and even Johnny Appleseed and the Apple culture)!
With this book we get a better understanding of how complex the settlement of Ohio was and even further, the settlement of our nation as a whole. Sure there are heroic figures that inspire us. But often, that is the only story that is told. We need to know the whole story of our past. It would be beneficial to us all to see more states and regions produce such a volume!
On behalf of the International Society of Landscape, Place and Material Culture, I would like to congratulate Tim and Brian on receiving this award for a great edited work!
Fred B. Kniffen Book Award
No award given this year.
The Wilhelm-Keiffer Student Research Award
No award given this year.
Warren E. Roberts Graduate Student Paper Award
From the award presentation:
Andrew Washburn, graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is the 2024 recipient of the ISPLMC Roberts Award. The award recognizes excellence in original graduate student fieldwork, documentary research, and writing in the area of traditional North American material culture.
Washburn’s submission is titled “Gigantic Wooden Horns Revised.” He focuses on a little-known example of material culture, the wooden “hailing trumpet.” His work expands on Daniel Rolph’s 1989 research (“Wooden Signal Horns of Southern Appalachia” in Material Culture) as he accounts for the existing horns in North America and traces their various historical uses. In his research, Washburn uses a variety of sources, including historical texts and interviews. Congratulations, Andrew on the award and great presentation at the 2024 ISLPMC Meeting.
ISLPMC Historic Preservation Award
From the award presentation:
The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire (or BHTNH) was formed as a nonprofit organization in 2016 in accordance with New Hampshire law to promote “awareness and appreciation of African American history and life in order to build more inclusive communities today.” The organization essentially began as the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, which was founded in 1995 and helped raise awareness of more than 300 years of Black history in New Hampshire. As with the other 12 British colonies, New Hampshire practiced slavery from the time of its earliest settlement. Today, the BHTNH offers programs including the annual Black New England Conference (which quite coincidentally is being held in Manchester consecutively with our meeting), the Black Matter is Life Poetry Series, an annual Juneteenth celebration, annual readings of Frederick Douglass’ famous essay, “What to the Slave is your 4th of July,” a series of lectures about New Hampshire’s Black history and African American culture known as the Elinor Williams Hooker Tea Talks, guided Sankofa tours of Black Heritage sites in Portsmouth, Exeter, Milford, Hancock, Warner, Dover, and Kittery, Maine; and virtual and self-guided tours. The organization continues to expand its work by placing monuments at important local Black Heritage sites, including in Nashua (to recognize Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella’s contributions to the integration of professional baseball), Portsmouth, Dover, Andover, Derry, Windham, and Kittery, Maine.
In 2018, the organization produced a 5-year Master Plan that proposed the expansion of the Black Heritage Trail throughout New Hampshire. On Saturday’s tour we will visit seven sites that are part of the Black History Trail of New Hampshire in Milford, including a monument and statue honoring author Harriet E. Wilson, the first African American woman to publish a novel in the United States.
The significance of this group is that prior to 1995, few in New Hampshire considered that the state’s history intertwined with the history of African Americans. The Black Heritage Trail is fighting this perception by promoting Slavery, Segregation, and the Myth of New Hampshire and the North, a film produced by Nancy Vawter and directed by Brian Vawter; JerriAnne Boggis of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire co-produced the film. Through the Shadows Fall North Virtual Classroom, the BHTNH offers schools a chance to view the film and speak with JerriAnne Boggis and Nancy Vawter.
Monument honoring Harriet E. Wilson, first African American woman to publish a novel in the US
At least partly as a result of the BHTNH’s ongoing work, other New Hampshire organizations have been inspired to research local Black history, including the Historical Society of Cheshire County in Keene and the Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough, and members of the Manchester Heritage Commission. Though this research is not currently part of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, it was certainly influenced by it.
For these reasons, the ISLPMC historic preservation awards committee is extremely proud to recognize the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire tonight for its outstanding contributions to the to the recognition and preservation of the state’s heritage and material culture. To receive our Annual Preservation Award tonight is Dr. Sharri Robinson.
ISLPMC Historic Preservation Certificate of Merit
From the award presentation:
For the ISLPMC Citation of Merit tonight we recognize the Lyndeborough Heritage Commission. While historic preservation commissions are commonly found in many American cities, they are exceedingly rare in our nation’s small towns.
The Town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, has a population of about 1700. With no industrial base and heavy reliance on property taxes, townspeople are reluctant to spend money on historic preservation and other projects relating to the town’s history. Since 1975, a relatively small group of people has banded together to promote such projects, to raise awareness and understanding of local history, and to raise money and organize volunteers to carry them out. They have done so through the multiple town commissions and committees and local non-profit organizations on which they have served.
In the late 1960s, in response to a growing population, town government moved out of the old Town Hall (1845) at Lyndeborough Center and into Citizens’ Hall (1889) in South Lyndeborough. Citizens’ Hall underwent an inexpensive renovation that did not consider the building’s historic character, resulting in a poorly utilized (and poorly treated) building. The Town Hall, which had served as the town’s Grange Hall since the 19th century, was abandoned almost entirely a few years later when, in 1973, the Pinnacle Grange disbanded.
In 1975, with the American Bicentennial celebrations looming, the town created a Bicentennial Committee to plan the town’s celebrations. That same year, the Lyndeborough Historical Society was founded. As both groups included members who were longtime residents and, in many cases, had been active in the local grange, they focused some of their efforts on repairing the Town Hall and finding ways by which to make it a centerpiece of town social life. As a result of their work, in the 1980s the building had running water, the outhouses were remodeled into rest rooms, a furnace was added, and the town constructed a new kitchen in one of the anterooms, all while the most important historical features of the building remained unchanged. Through the Lyndeborough Historical Society’s efforts, the town hired an architect to evaluate this building and the neighboring Congregational Church (1837), which led to the inclusion of the two buildings, along with the Town Pound (1774) and the town common, on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Members of the Society who were interested in the renovation of the church building also created the Lyndeborough Restoration and Preservation Association, which helped prepare the National Register nomination for the district, raised money, and helped to oversee repairs to the church building. The association raised nearly $41,000 before disbanding in 1991 when their work was completed.
Today, in addition to preserving and storing many historical artifacts relating to the town’s 287-year history (and occasionally exhibiting them), the Lyndeborough Historical Society is nearing its fundraising goal of $156,000 to purchase the Congregational Church in Lyndeborough Center, with the intention of donating it to the town while also using it to display some of their artifacts. With the Lyndeborough Heritage Commission, the Society recently took over organization of the annual Community Day festivities, a tradition with roots stretching to the state’s “Old Home Days” movement of the late 1890s. Also, it recently published a new history of Lyndeborough.
The society was less active in the 1990s, 2000s, and early 2010s, but some of its board members served on the town’s Meetinghouse Committee. This committee oversaw the maintenance of the Town Hall from the early 1990s until 2010, when it was disbanded after the creation of the Lyndeborough Center Historic District Commission. The commission continues to oversee the maintenance of the building and its surrounding, frequently clashing with members of the Board of Selectmen, Public Works Department, and others in an effort to maintain the area’s historical integrity. In 2013 the commission produced a lengthy report on the hall’s cultural and historical integrity in an effort to produce a baseline for its maintenance.
In the late 1990s, a second preservation and renovation project became a focus of local interest: the renovation of Citizens’ Hall in South Lyndeborough Village. The building had been poorly maintained since the 1970s, and in the 1980s the building’s second-floor ballroom was closed to large gatherings. In 1997, the Town of Lyndeborough voted to renovate the first floor of Citizens’ Hall for $186,600. The money was considered to be much less than what was needed to complete the renovation, never mind preserve or restore elements of the structure’s historical (and structural) integrity. For this project, the town created the Citizens’ Hall Renovation Committee, which also came to include members of the Lyndeborough-based Lafayette Artillery Company. This group, founded in 1804 as part of the state militia, became known in the 1980s for its work as a Civil War reenactment and educational group. The artillery stored its historic 1844 brass cannon on the property, and had been headquartered at Citizens’ Hall since its construction in 1889 (sharing the building with the town since 1966).
Lyndeborough Citizens’ Hall
Through the efforts of the artillery, more than 100 local volunteers took part in the renovation of Citizens’ Hall. Meanwhile, the committee as a whole identified historic characteristics of the building that should be preserved or restored, eventually determining that the building’s interior should match its 1920s appearance as much as possible, and successfully nominated the building to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. They also found ways to strengthen the building’s structure and reopen the second-floor ballroom to large gatherings. Thanks to these efforts, when the building reopened in 2001, the $186,600 budget had resulted in what the project architect estimated was a $500,000 renovation. Moreover, the building became a source of pride for townspeople, many of whom previously had considered the building to be an obsolete eyesore that should be sold or torn down.
The Artillery Company, meanwhile, continues to help collect and preserve historic items of local interest, organizes the town’s annual Memorial Day (a tradition it has carried on since the demise of the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic), helped clean up the historic Whittemore Cemetery, participates in local educational efforts, and has aided the Lyndeborough Historical Society in its fundraising efforts to support the purchase of the Congregational Church.
In 2010, members of the Citizens’ Hall Renovation Committee and Lafayette Artillery went on to form the Monuments Committee, which researched the town's World War I and World War II/Korean War monuments (after the library decided to move them off library property), relocated them to a suitable parcel of land in South Lyndeborough (the parcel is maintained by the Heritage Commission today), researched and re-set a historic Civil War-era cannon nearby, and created two new monuments for wars since Korea. The committee was recently reactivated to research and create a monument for local soldiers of the Revolutionary War.
The town’s historic-preservation and educational efforts resulted, in 2004, in the creation of the Lyndeborough Heritage Commission. Appointed by the Board of Selectmen, this five-person (excluding alternates) committee includes members of the board of the historical society as well as appointees serving on the Historic District Commission and Monuments Committee. In 20 years, this group has documented the town's historic roads, cellar holes, culverts, and pre-1905 houses, and generated a digitized map of these sites. They have worked with homeowners to mark historic houses with signs, and placed information signs at various sites of historical interest around town, including all nine of the town’s cemeteries.
The group cleaned up and worked toward the conservation of the nineteenth-century Old Temple Road stone-arch bridges and a long-neglected 19th century roadside monument near the center, and oversaw the restoration of the circa-1920s painted backdrop on the stage at the Town Hall in the Center. The commission purchased four wooden display cases (built by a local resident) to display artifacts belonging to the Lafayette Artillery and Lyndeborough Historical Society in the Citizens' Hall ballroom, and co-produced a 35-minute film about local history with the Wilton Heritage Commission, entitled A Shared History—Wilton and Lyndeborough. The group is also vocal in its efforts to preserve the historical integrity of Citizens’ Hall, the Lyndeborough Center Historic District, and the town’s historic cemeteries, and co-sponsors the annual Community Day celebration.
Tonight’s Citation of Merit recognizes all of the above-named groups, but names the Lyndeborough Heritage Commission as the lead organization in the effort because of its leadership role in the preservation of the town’s historic material culture and the education of townspeople (but also its town government) beginning in 2004. The Lyndeborough Historical Society and Lafayette Artillery Company have been and continue to be significant contributors to these efforts. The other contributors are groups that have been formed to carry out specific tasks that contributed to a spirit of preservation and education, some of which were later assumed by the Heritage Commission. The reason for their recognition together in this nomination is that all of these groups typically have had members in common, have pooled their resources with the common goal of preserving Lyndeborough’s history and built landscapes, and continue to build on the accomplishments of each other.
On Saturday’s field trip, we will be visiting the Lyndeborough Center Historic District, as well as Citizens’ Hall and the Memorial Common in South Lyndeborough, where we’ll see the work of some of these groups.
So tonight, the ISLPMC historic preservation awards committee would like to recognize the Lyndeborough Heritage Commission for its outstanding efforts to preserve the town’s heritage and material culture