Matthew Phillips, who will receive his MA in American history in December 2012, has been hired as a park ranger at Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial, after completing an internship there as part of his degree program. As an intern, Phillips conducted research on the involvement of the Custis, Lee, and Burke families with Liberian colonization through the American Colonization Society and its Virginia Colonization Society auxiliary. (The Burkes were manumitted by Mary Custis, Robert E. Lee’s mother-in-law, in order to migrate to Liberia in 1853.) Now, as a paid employee, he will continue doing historic preservation and public history at the site.
December 03, 2012