Announcements
2025 BAR Founder's Fellowship Grant Recipient
Announcing the 2025 BAR Founder’s Fellowship Grant Recipient: Sandy Spector!
The Brigade of the American Revolution is proud to announce Sandy Spector as the 2025 recipient of the BAR Founder’s Fellowship and Research Grant. A longtime educator and historical interpreter best known for her nationally acclaimed portrayal of Martha Washington, Spector has spent over a decade bringing the nation’s original First Lady to life with exceptional fidelity and primary-source scholarship. Her Fellowship project represents an exciting next step in elevating public understanding of women’s material culture during the Revolutionary era.
Spector’s proposal focuses on the first phase of a multi-year effort to research, pattern, and recreate one of Martha Washington’s surviving early-war gowns, now recently returned to the New Hampshire Historical Society. While her current wardrobe is meticulously accurate in cut, construction, and social context, the garments she wears are not yet direct reproductions of Martha’s actual extant clothing. This project changes that. Through detailed textile research at Mount Vernon, the creation of an accurate pair of 1770s stays that will become the basis for her planned full reproduction of Martha’s original gown. Spector aims to produce a living, breathing representation of Martha Washington’s attire available to the public and in educational programming.
This work speaks directly to the BAR’s mission: advancing rigorous historical research, supporting material-culture scholarship, and deepening public engagement with the everyday lives of those who shaped the Revolution. By reconstructing Martha Washington’s wardrobe using period-correct methods and documentation, Spector’s project will provide an unparalleled educational bridge between past and present—allowing audiences, students, and reenactors to experience history with greater authenticity and emotional resonance. Her documentation of the process will be shared widely, culminating in a formal presentation at the 2027 BAR Symposium.
The Brigade congratulates Sandy Spector on this well-deserved award and looks forward to supporting her groundbreaking work in bringing Martha Washington’s world—and wardrobe—vividly to life.
New testimonial: Lafayette-Durfee House
"The Lafayette-Durfee House recently had the pleasure of hosting an event featuring Sandy Spector as Martha Washington. Her first person portrayal of our country’s first First Lady was spectacular to say the least. The audience was totally immersed in her performance, which was both entertaining and educational. Sandy’s performance as Martha Washington was spellbinding. It was if Martha was in the room engaging in conversation with the audience as she related the facts of Mrs. Washington's life as a wife, mother and the First Lady of a new nation."