Preserve WV Members

Preserve WV AmeriCorps Members

Preserve WV Members' service emphasizes community development and revitalization through projects focused on historic preservation, volunteer management, and cultural heritage tourism development. Learn more about our new class of Members (listed in alphabetical order) below and visit Preserve WV Stories to read about the service they are providing to revitalize our Mountain State.

Carrie Kidd

City of Mount Hope
Fayette County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Carrie Kidd is a Mount Hope, WV native. In the fall of 2013, with the help of area residents, she founded Harmony for Hope, a nonprofit organization working to unite Southern West Virginia communities through music and art projects. Working with that organization propelled her own career aspirations to enroll at Marshall University as a graduate student where she will graduate December 2018 with a master’s degree as a Leadership Specialist in Nonprofit and Public Agency. By becoming involved with PAWV, she will be able to help revitalize our community by adding area attractions and improving public buildings in Mount Hope.

candice helms

Hinton Historic Landmarks Commission
Hinton, Summers County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Terms

Candice Helms, may not be native to West Virginia, but upon moving here from Texas in 2015, she quickly found herself deeply in love with the mountains and a huge desire to do better by her community, Hinton. Her main mission was to be as close to the change and growth as she could, for her son’s future.

In May of 2019, she enthusiastically signed on as the Hinton Historic Landmarks AmeriCorps member. The City Manager felt she had been doing most of the work that would be required from her over the past 2 years, and knew she was the one for the job.

Her focus during this term and beyond, is to empower the locals, preserve Hinton’s history, and be an example of what little we can do to make a huge impact. All the while, taking in, and absorbing as much history as she can.

CONNIE eVANS

West Virginia & Regional History Center
West Virginia Association of Museums
2019-2020 Service Term

Connie is originally from Savannah, Ga; as a “service brat,” where she moved a number of times during her youth to different states. Connie earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all in History, from Louisiana State University. In 1998, she took a post as an assistant professor history at Baldwin Wallace University, and took early retirement as a full professor in 2015 to pursue a library science degree at Kent State University, which she earned in August, 2016. She has been working as an independent research consultant/genealogist since that time, but sought opportunities to work in the field of public history.

At WV&RHC, under the supervision of Lori Hostuttler, Connie will review and correct the transcriptions of oral interviews done with Professor Emory Kemp, and will start assisting with his collection of materials associated with the Institute of the History of Technology and Industrial Archeology.

At WVAM, under the supervision of Danielle Petrak, she will help to build capacity at the organization by enhancing membership activities, including the organization and mailing of a quarterly newsletter and a 2020 WVAM Annual Conference announcement postcard. She will help to promote upcoming workshops and plan the 2020 WVAM Annual Conference.

EMMA SATTERFIELD

Clio Foundation
Statewide
2019-2020 Service Term

Emma grew up in San Angelo, a small city in West Texas, and attended Rice University in Houston, where she graduated in May 2019 with degrees in anthropology and history.

While working with historical and archaeological resources, Emma realized that she enjoyed studying how people engage with the past just as much as she liked learning “the facts.” She took advantage of several opportunities that her university offered to work on projects related to public history, such as the development of an interpretive plan for a little-known historic site in a popular Houston park and the creation of an online exhibit about a forgotten controversy in Rice’s past. She attended an archaeological field school at Amache, a WWII Japanese-American internment camp in Colorado that, while teaching the basics of fieldwork, also emphasized the potential for collaboration and service in archaeology. These projects introduced Emma to the kind of work that she wants to do in the future.

While Emma loves studying archaeology and history for their own sakes, she'd like to serve a wider community and help to connect the public to the past in an impactful way. As the member serving with Clio, she will edit and create new entries and tours, connect and support various organizations that use Clio, and record oral histories and narratives as part of Clio’s new audio feature. While she is based in Huntington and will be focusing primarily on sites in Cabell and Wayne counties, she will be traveling all over the state this year conducting research and bringing Clio to an ever-expanding audience. As a total newcomer to West Virginia, Emma is excited to learn everything she can about its history while connecting West Virginians to their past and helping them tell their stories.

JAMIE BILLMAN

Old Hemlock Foundation
Bruceton Mills, Preston County
2019-2020 Service Term

Jamie Billman is from Mars, PA. Jamie found herself in Morgantown in August of 2018 with little to no direction or idea of what she wanted to do. Thankfully, after some amazing professors and friends guided Jamie, she found herself in the Public History Masters Program at WVU.

Jamie enjoys driving through the fog covered valleys on the drive out to her site in rural Bruceton Mills - excited at what the day has in store for her. Jamie very much found herself enthralled in George Bird Evans writing, and how poetically and eloquently he speaks of the forest, hunting and, of course, his beloved setters.

Jamie hopes to gain hands-on experience through this AmeriCorps position on what it means to maintain a historic structure, museum building, and the property that comes along with it. As well as looking through archived material and seeing what more we can learn. Further, Jamie very much is looking forward to exploring the forests here and bringing her 5-year-old Beagle Mix along with her! She is looking forward to meeting all of the people who are involved with Old Hemlock and also working towards getting more people involved with the foundation.

Jessicah Hersom

WVU Jackson's Mill
Lewis County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Jessi Hersom is a West Virginia native, who graduated from West Virginia University in May 2019 with a B.A. in art history. During her time at West Virginia University, Jessi focused on early American world's fairs and completed her capstone project on the WV exhibit that was included in the 1933-34 Century of Progress Exhibition that took place in Chicago and was later moved and rehoused at the WV state 4-H camp, Jackson's Mill. This research, along with her previous experience at the site as a 4-H member in her youth, led her to the AmeriCorps position at Jackson's Mill.

At Jackson's Mill, Jessi inventories the site's archives and serves in the historic area, leading tours and demonstrations in the blacksmith shop and a 1790s historic grist mill. Jessi also tends to the historic area garden, which includes heirloom plants that would have been grown by settlers during the time of the mill's operation. During her time at Jackson’s Mill, Jessi will continue to enhance public knowledge of the site by helping its visitors learn about historic homesteads and early state history.

Kara Gordon

Cockayne Farmstead
Glen Dale, Marshall County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Kara Gordon is a West Virginia native. She holds a Bachelor's degree in History from Wheeling Jesuit University. While in school, Kara also worked, volunteered, or interned at several museums and archives, including the Archives of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, the Mansion Museum at Oglebay Institute, and the West Virginia and Regional History Center. She loves studying everyday history in many forms but is especially interested in material culture, and most especially, clothing and textiles. In the summer of 2017, she interned at Colonial Williamsburg in the Margaret Hunter Millinery Shop.

Kara is looking forward to taking on the greater challenges and responsibilities that come with serving in a place where her ideas and actions can truly make a difference, instead of being lost in the crowd. She believes the Cockayne Farmstead is a place and a story you can truly become attached to, and she looks forward to serving here for the coming year.

kenzie new

Matewan Depot Replica Museum & Welcome Center (sponsored by the National Coal Heritage Area)
Matewan, Mingo County
2019-2020 Service Term

Ksenia Bradner

Preservation Alliance of West Virginia
Statewide
2019-2020 Service Term

Ksenia Bradner grew up in McLean, Virginia near Washington, D.C., and was adopted from St. Petersburg, Russia in 1993. She earned an Associate of Science magna cum laude, and holds a BA history degree from Goucher College. Ksenia's education was tailored to public history, which involves communicating history in an accessible way to the public. Her career goal is to work in the museum field in a position that pertains to public history, rather than archival work or preservation.

She has completed two excellent internships in the museum field - the Civil War Medical Museum in Frederick, Maryland and the National Park Service Museum Resource Center in Landover, Maryland. In 2018, Ksenia worked as a History Interpreter for George Washington’s Mount Vernon during the busy Student Highlights season where the estate greets over a half a million visitors of all ages and nationalities.

marilyn creager

Pocahontas County Opera House
Marlinton, Pocahontas County
2019-2020 Service Term

Marilyn Creager grew up in Green Bank, West Virginia. She graduated from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in December 2019 with a degree in English. She is hoping to attend a graduate program in library science with a concentration in archives and records management starting in the Fall of 2020.

Marilyn is currently the AmeriCorps member at the Pocahontas County Opera House in Marlinton, West Virginia. She hopes to help give back to the community that helped raise her and to enjoy the rich history of musical traditions from Appalachia and the world. She wants to help continue the mission of the Opera House to be a community resource as both a center for the arts and a center for the community.

mckenzie hitchcock

Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission
Charles Town, Jefferson County
2019-2020 Service Term

McKenzie holds BA’s in history and classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2017), and an MA in archaeology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (2019). Having spent most of her time focusing on the Greek and Roman world, transitioning into ‘modern’ history is a new challenge McKenzie is truly excited about! She thinks history has the ability to connect us to neighbors all around the globe, and gives us the opportunity to think about our place in the world as it relates to the broader context of human development. Serving at a place like the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission provides McKenzie with the chance to see first-hand how physical spaces directly and indirectly impact or interaction with our surroundings, our predecessors, and the history that engulfs this region.

Robert Simmons

Craik-Patton House
Charleston, Kanawha County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Robert is a near lifelong Charlestonian, having grown up in, and recently moved back to the East End. He attended George Washington High School, and has a Bachelors and Masters both in History from Marshall University. During his time at MU he worked on a thesis focused on legal history in the early American Republic, however he also studied extensively the colonization of Virginia, the American Revolution, and the Constitutional Convention. Robert has approximately five years of experience working as a summer camp instructor and substitute teacher, and currently is an adjunct professor teaching both World and Early American History at the University of Charleston. While there are many grand features of the Craik-Patton House, the prominence its owners have had during so many significant points in American history was the main lure that attracted him to this particular museum.

Sarah Insalaco

Harrison County Historical Society
Clarksburg, Harrison County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Sarah was born and raised near Knoxville, Tennessee. She earned her bachelor’s degree in History from Marymount Manhattan College in 2016. From May-November 2018, Sarah served with Northern Bedrock Historic Preservation Corps based out of Duluth, Minnesota. During that service term, she would travel with a team around the state of Minnesota and do various historic preservation projects, which included cemetery and window restoration, chinking and daubing, scraping and painting, replacing siding on old buildings, and community outreach- they laid floors for a Habitat for Humanity House. Sarah is so excited to be on this adventure with AmeriCorps.

SUMMER PHILLIPS

WVU BAD Buildings Program, Northern WV Brownfields Assistance Center
Morgantown, Monongalia County
2018-2019 & 2019-2020 Service Terms

Summer Phillips is the Preserve WV AmeriCorps member serving with the WVU BAD Buildings Program. Born and raised in Morgantown, Summer graduated from University High School in 2015. She then went on to study English Literary and Cultural Studies and Women and Gender Studies at WVU. During the course of her time in the university, she studied Appalachian culture and worked at a research lab to study West Virginian dialects.

After graduating in May 2018, she began looking for a way to serve her home state and help West Virginian communities. This mission lead her to Preserve WV AmeriCorps program and to the WVU BAD Buildings service site. While there, Summer is excited to help provide rural communities the resources, assistance, and advice they need to address abandoned and dilapidated properties.

Susan Crowell

Main Street Martinsburg
Berkeley County Historical Society
Martinsburg, Berkeley County
2019-2020 Service Term

Susan attended Hagerstown Community College where she worked on her associates degree, then transferred to Shepherd University where she obtained a degree in History with the concentration in Historic Preservation. In May 2019, Susan graduated from Southern New Hampshire with her MA in Public history.

Susan has volunteered at the Berkeley County Historical Society since 2014 and interned there in 2015. Since then, she has continued to volunteer and completed research projects that include genealogy and historic properties.

Susan will split her service term between two sites. At the Martinsburg Roundhouse Authority, Susan will provide tours, help with events, and help build their volunteer program by creating a docent plan and volunteer database. The other site is Main Street Martinsburg where she will be develop a downtown walking tour, update the website, volunteer and membership database, and update the downtown building inventory.

Virginia shimek

Adaland Mansion
Barbour County Historical Society
Philippi, Barbour County
2019-2020 Service Term

Will Whearty

New River Gorge National River
Glen Jean, Summers County
2019-2020 Service Term