Nichole Garbrough (MA 2014) was recently selected by the EIU Graduate School to receive the prestigious King-Mertz Distinguished Research/Creative Activity Award for her Independent Study project “Delaware Valley Allegiances and Identity in the Eighteenth Century” done under the supervision of Dr. Charles Foy. This paper addressed the question of how and when residents of British North American changed their identities from being British to being American. Through a careful and detailed analysis of identity Nichole demonstrated Delaware’s unique history among the thirteen colonies and at the same time confirmed that its diversity and lacking a monolithic religious community or mono-crop economy were more typical of colonial America than Massachusetts or Virginia, colonies which most historians have focused their attention.
Nichole’s research for this project was done while taking Dr. Newton Key’s Early Modern England and Dr. Foy’s Early America seminars.
