Ben Lane Award

The Vermont Historical Society bestows the Ben Lane Award ($200) for the best article published in Vermont History over a span of four volumes (the award was previously based on a span of two volumes). Winners are chosen by the VHS Publications and Research Committee.  The award was created in 1981 by the Lane Press of Burlington, Vermont, to honor its long-time president, Ben B. Lane, on his 85th birthday.  

Past Winners

Volumes 72-73

Keith Erekson, “The Joseph Smith Memorial Monument and Royalton’s ‘Mormon Affair’: Religion, Community, Memory, and Politics in Progressive Vermont,” 73(Summer/Fall 2005).

Volumes 70-71

Michael Sherman, “Brickyards and Frameworks: A Retrospectus and Prospectus on Vermont History Writing,” 71(Winter/Spring 2003) ; and Blake Harrison, “The Technological Turn: Skiing and Landscape Change in Vermont, 1930-1970,” 71(Summer/Fall 2003).

Volumes 67-69

Kenneth Degree, “Malfeasance or Theft?: What Really Happened at the Middlebury Branch of the Vermont State Bank?,” 68(Winter/Spring 2000).

Volumes 65-66

David E. Narrett, "'I Must Again Remind You that You are a Vermonter': Henry Stevens, Historical Tradition, and Green Mountain State Patriotism in the 1840s," 66(Summer/Fall 1998).

Volume 64

Donald A. Smith, "Green Mountain Insurgency: Transformation of New York's Forty-Year Land War," 64(Fall 1996).

Volume 63

Deborah P. Clifford, "Abby Hemenway's Road to Rome," 63(Fall 1995).

Volume 62

William A. Haviland and Margory W. Power, "A New Look at Vermont's Oldest Art: Understanding the Bellows Falls Petroglyphs," 62(Fall 1994).

Volume 61

Gene Sessions, "Espionage in Windsor: Clarence H. Waldron and Patriotism in World War I," 61(Summer 1993)

Volume 60

Betsy Beattie, "Migrants and Millworkers: The French Canadian Population of Burlington and Colchester, 1860-1870,” 60(Spring 1992).

Volume 59

Kevin Dann, "From Degeneration to Regeneration: The Eugenics Survey of Vermont, 1925-1936," 59(Winter 1991).

Volume 58

Marilyn S. Blackwell, “Growing Up Male in the 1830s: Thomas Pickman Tyler (1815-1892) and the Tyler Family of Brattleboro,” 58(Winter 1990).

Volume 57

J. Kevin Graffagnino, “’Vermonters Unmasked’: Charles Phelps and the Patterns of Dissent in Revolutionary Vermont,” 57(Summer 1989).

Volume 56

Gary J. Aichele, “Making the Vermont Constitution: 1777-1824,” 57(Summer 1988).

Volume 55

Gene Sessions, “’Years of Struggle’: The Irish in the Village of Northfield, 1845-1900,” 55 (Spring 1987).

Volume 54

Colin G. Calloway, “Green Mountain Diaspora: Indian Population Movements in Vermont, c. 1600-1800,” 54(Fall 1986).

Volume 53

Samuel B. Hand, Jeffrey D. Marshall and D. Gregory Sanford, “’Little Republics’: The Structure of State Politics in Vermont, 1854-1920,” 53(Summer 1985).

Volume 52

Colin G. Calloway, “The Conquest of Vermont: Vermont’s Indian Troubles in Context,” 52 Summer 1984).

Volume 51

Lorna Quimby and Shepard B. Clough, “Peacham, Vermont: Fifty Years of Economic Change, 1929-1979,” 51(Winter 1983).

Volume 50

Kenneth R. Stevens, “James Grogan and the Crisis in Canadian-American Relations, 1837-1842,” 50(Fall 1982).

Volume 49

Margaret K. Nelson, “Vermont Female Schoolteachers in the Nineteenth Century,” 49(Winter 1981).