I am currently supported in my research on the servants who lived in the Lincoln White House by a grant from the White House Historical Association and by my position as a research fellow at the Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy at Lincoln Memorial University. One published work and two works-in-progress currently result from this support. In Summer 2013, The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association printed “A Representative ‘of our people’: The Agency of William Slade, Leader in the African American Community and Usher to Abraham Lincoln” (which is now publicly available online). This winter, I contributed an essay on the loyalty of four White House servants to a collection on Abraham Lincoln and the rule of law.

As 2014 moves forward, I plan to seek out a publisher for my book-in-progress on the Lincoln household servants.

I am also collecting records and oral histories on the Grace Nettleton Home for Girls which existed in Harrogate, Tennessee from the early 1900s to the mid-1950s. I was first intrigued by the story of this former institution while researching Harrogate and Cumberland Gap, and the book includes several pictures of girls who lived in the home in the early 1900s, 1930s, and 1940s. If you know someone who lived or worked in the home during its existence, or if you have stories to share, I would love to speak to you.