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The Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives (SARA) has a new summer intern!
Gabby Stockand, 19, of Bentonville, is a junior with a double major in public history and anthropology and geography at Arkansas Tech University. She heard about the SARA internship through an announcement from ATU’s history department. The position interested her because her public history focus is on archival work. She felt it would be a great opportunity to learn more about the profession as well as make connections with archivists currently in the field.
Gabby started working at SARA at the end of May and will continue through the first week of August. She is a fast learner with a strong work ethic, and we are so excited to have her as part of the team.
She is enjoying her time in Washington because it covers a wide variety of her professional interests which are both archives and archeology. She is enjoying gaining experience processing collections to make them accessible for researchers. She says what she enjoys most about her work at SARA is “delving deep into the lives of individuals and seeing how they impacted their greater community.” One example of this is the Gratiot Family papers. The collection includes a photograph that documents the “first court held at Hope on October 31, 1914”. This was a time in Hempstead County history when the county seat location was hotly contested between Washington and Hope. After five elections and an Arkansas Supreme Court Decision, Hope was declared the county seat in 1939.
When not studying history, she enjoys being outdoors as well as reading historical fiction, fantasy, and ethnography. She is also a cellist and fluent in conversational French.
The SARA Foundation, Inc., which is the friends group for SARA, sponsors the internship salary each year, and Historic Washington State Park also gives support by providing housing. Applications are posted in the spring through the Arkansas State Archives. For more information, contact Archival Manager, Melissa Nesbitt at [email protected] or call 870-983-2633.