LIVERMORE — High school seniors have the chance to receive a $1,000 scholarship, named in honor of the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center founder, Ethel “Billie” Gammon. Applications are due by May 15.
One $1,000 scholarship is awarded each year to a Maine High School senior who has been inspired by their experience at the Norlands and is planning to pursue a field that can be related to its mission, which includes history, but could also include American studies, education, museum studies and sustainable agriculture for example.
No later than May 15, applicants must complete an application and submit an essay of 300 to 500 words about how experiencing living history at the Norlands relates to and/or has impacted their interests and their life plans. A committee will review the applications for completeness, quality of writing and for clear demonstration of how visiting the Norlands has inspired the applicant. The recipient will be notified in early June.
Applications are available by visiting www.norlands.org or emailing norlands@norlands.org.
The Norlands Board of Trustees established the Ethel “Billie” Gammon History Education Scholarship Fund in 2010 to honor Gammon’s bottomless enthusiasm for sharing American history by providing support in her name for “learning through fun.”
Billie started her work at the Norlands with the restoration of the library in 1954. She went on to develop a world renowned museum education program based on living history methods.
Gammon took great joy in seeing visitors to the living history museum that she founded “get it” – that history education could be fun and that lessons from rural life in the 19th century are timeless; to feel what it was like to sit on the hard school benches, to know the day started and ended with family chores and responsibilities and to understand the rural Maine philosophy of everyone pulling together.
Washburn-Norlands Living History Center is a nonprofit museum dedicated to preserving the heritage and traditions of rural life in Maine’s past, celebrating the achievements of Livermore’s Washburn family and using living history methods to make values, issues and activities of the past relevant to present and future generations.
The 450 acre property is comprised of working land and buildings relating to the site’s role as the 19th century homestead of the Washburn family. It includes a preserved 1828 Universalist meeting house, the Washburn’s 1867 mansion, an 1885 granite library built by the Washburn brothers, 18th century cape, sap-house and restored one-room school house.
For more information or to download a scholarship application, visit www.norlands.org.
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