Ross E. Heller Fellowship
Ross E. Heller and Vice Chairman Jonathan White
In 2021, publisher Ross E. Heller—a first-time Lincoln Forum attendee in 2021—endowed a ten-year program to bring an outstanding Lincoln librarian, archivist, or curator to The Lincoln Forum each year. Heller, who publishes CustomNEWS, Inc., and USAE Weekly, bibles of the American trade and business meeting industries, is the editor of by Abraham Lincoln: His 1858 Time Capsule, a handsomely reproduced facsimile edition of the small scrapbook of newspaper clippings, speech extracts, and handwritten notes on slavery that Lincoln prepared for fellow Sangamon County, Illinois, politician James N. Brown toward the end of that year’s heated campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Previous recipients of the Heller Fellowship:
2022 Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California
2023 Jessie Cortesi, Senior Lincoln Librarian at the Rolland Center for Lincoln Research in the Allen County Public Library of Fort Wayne, Indiana
2024 Katie Montemayor, Museum Collections Specialist of Special Collections at the A.K. Smiley Public Library and the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands, California
2025 Jonathan W. Smallwood, Assistant Director and Curator of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee
2026 Christian McWhirter, Historical Initiatives Consultant, Lincoln Presidential Foundation