Holly Gruntner

Bio

Holly received her BA from the University of Minnesota, Morris. After working for three years at the Library of Congress, she completed her History MA at William & Mary in 2017. Her MA portfolio explored how botanists in early America relied upon their spouses, children, enslaved people, and servants for crucial scientific labors.

Holly is a PhD candidate in the History Department at William & Mary. Her dissertation is titled "Fertile Ground: Practical Gardens and Horticultural Knowledge in Early America." It focuses on British North America and the early American Republic -- from Virginia north to Maine -- from 1700-1830. To understand ordinary people's intellectual lives and how they put their knowledge to work, Holly's dissertation pulls together a constellation of experiences, tasks, and knowledges of gardens and gardening. It argues that horticultural knowledge was socially made and circulated in a variety of contexts, through collaboration and conflict within households; transactions that took place between neighbors; annotating printed almanacs; and in the annals of agricultural, horticultural, and scientific societies.

Holly is currently a Dissertation Fellow at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.