Division celebrates new interns in 2022
The Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs relies on so many people to save Delaware history, including interns. Meet some of the Division’s most recent interns helping out at sites throughout the state.
Brayden Moore (he/him) is a student at the University of Delaware studying history education and museum studies who is interning at Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes, focusing on the museum’s “Recapturing Black Beaches: A Shared Story Project” oral history initiative. His goal is to do further research on the information uncovered in the “Segregated Sands” project. Moore is tasked with transcribing recorded interviews as well as obtaining additional interviews that will expand the project. Moore said he hopes to highlight the importance of first-person accounts of segregation at Delaware’s beaches so that they are known and remembered by people who are still alive today. Additionally, he will promote the exhibit at the Zwaanendael Museum with dynamic social media content. His research informs an ongoing process of raising awareness of historic racism in Delaware and how the shared experiences of segregation can be taught and presented to a wider audience.
Kayla Heard (she/they) is a graduate student at the University of Delaware and a historian intern with the National Park Service working at the Delaware Historical and Cultural Affairs’s John Dickinson Plantation this summer. Her task was to update the 1961 National Historic Landmarks documentation for the site by using primary and secondary sources to research and document the formerly overlooked African descendent community, culture and economic history of people who lived on the plantation as indentured servants and enslaved people. Using the National Historical Landmarks nomination criteria to update the official documents and adding the newly rediscovered burial ground of enslaved humans, she aimed to improve awareness of those previously disregarded community groups. Division staff are enthusiastic about this research and how it could provide a model process in the future for how additional research could be conducted at other historic sites such as the Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site.
Annie Hicks (they/them) is a student at the University of Delaware majoring in history education with a museum studies minor, and is an intern at the Cooch’s Bridge Historic Site where they are working closely on the history of the Cooch-Dayett Mill and transcribing legal documents and wills of the Cooch family and site. Their intention is to gather primary source information about the diverse people who lived, worked and passed through Cooch’s Bridge homestead over the past two centuries. They are making great progress in the research process to gather important information that is unknown or unfamiliar about those heads of household, widows, employees and enslaved people. The goal will be to examine the role of widows, documented women’s work, the part employees played and to discover the enslaved people who lived, worked and died on the property. This experience is expanding their previous work with museum studies and interpretation to include research methods and site management, revealing the requirements a historic property requires to function as a safe, accessible space. The challenges of acquiring vital funding to research, restore, preserve and maintain a historic museum site is becoming evident through their time at the site. They said working on documents that haven’t been reviewed in over a century or have been lost to time is very fulfilling.