Finding Washingtonia, a Greek Refugee Colony

This past May, I joined a team led by Dr. Pettegrew to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to the magnificent country of Greece. Our main goal was to use sources related to Samuel Gridley Howe and available maps to try and locate the Washingtonia colony of 1829. Our team comprised some Messiah University History students, Messiah Cybersecurity students, and students from Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. While there, we spent time ground truthing, sorting pottery, sketching artifacts, and learning how to do photogrammetry.  

As an up-and-coming documentarian, I knew this trip would make for an excellent story. I had the privilege of filming our discoveries as they happened. By the end of the trip, I had a documentary put together telling the story of our team and our amazing discovery. Five months later, we are still working on tying together the final versions of this massive project. Last week we presented our work at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology for the Central Pennsylvania GIS Conference. In January, we will present our research and findings at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. This project has many moving parts, as Alex Shehigian notes in her recent essay on Digitizing Washingtonia. 

In brief, our paper in January will be a collaboration of Professors David Pettegrew, Kostis Kourelis, Albert Sarvis, and Nikos Poulopoulos, as well as two students: myself and my fellow student researcher Alex Shehigian. Together we will be crafting a paper describing the archaeological research we carried out, the exciting discoveries we found, and how they relate to the colony of Washingtonia and the history of the Corinthia in the 19th century. Together our team can speak to the many aspects of the trip, discoveries, and research that we conducted this past May term. 

 I am working to produce a second and final cut of my Washingtonia documentary to accompany our Archaeological team’s paper publication. The original cut was put together well for the short turnaround time I had to do it in. Now, a few months later, with some hindsight on the documentary and the discovery itself, I know what I am missing in this project – the “now what” factor. Every documentary you watch on the History Channel or some streaming service has a portion dedicated to the “now what” factor. I plan to add this element by conducting new interviews with the professors on the team and gathering their thoughts about what has happened in the past few months with this project and why it is essential. 

I will be excited to share the final polished products with the world in a few weeks. Things have been progressing nicely in the preparation phase, but now I am beginning the real gritty work I can already see starting to produce a blossom. If you are interested in the work I am doing now, my past work, or my following projects, make sure to check my website and YouTube page for the final documentary.

Keli Ganey is a Senior History major at Messiah University with a concentration in Public History and minor in Digital Public Humanities. She holds the position of student assistant to the Dean of the School of Arts Culture and Society as well as Humanities scholarship program leadership council co-chair, President of the Messiah History Club, Public Historian for Emmy Nominated Yellow Breeches Television and serves on the editorial staff. Keli also is a Chester Way Fellow under Dr. David Pettegrew for her final semester. You can see her many works in various forms on her personal website.