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 for Affectionate Friends & Humble servants
EXCERPT (see more at link) from the Brigade of the Am. Revolution
The conference opened with “Affectionate Friends & Humble Servants”, performed by Sandy and Michele. The presentation was a remarkable way to begin the weekend. Through historical theater, attendees were transported into the friendship and correspondence between Martha Washington and Mercy Otis Warren, experiencing their relationship not simply as historical figures on a page, but as real people navigating the challenges of revolution, politics, family, and friendship.
The performance was informative, engaging, and deeply human.