The ACHS Research Travel Grant is offered to support scholars and researchers working on any project related to American Catholic history who need to conduct research in any archive, library, or repository in the five-county Philadelphia area. 

Philip Chivily, a doctoral student in history at Baylor University, is researching the development of Black Catholic communities in the Chesapeake region following the Civil War. His dissertation, “Where the Mission Ended: Black Catholics and the Unfinished Work of the Mill Hill and Josephite Fathers in the Post-Civil War Chesapeake,” examines how Black Catholic laypeople and clergy worked with Mill Hill and Josephite missionaries to build stable parishes, institutions, and a distinct Black Catholic identity during Reconstruction and the late nineteenth century. 

The ACHS Research Travel Grant will cover the costs of Chivily’s travel to the Catholic Historical Research Center of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Archives of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, the Archives of the Diocese of Wilmington, and the Delaware Public Archives.