Virtual Talk: Protestant Relics in Early America
Join us for a book talk with Dr. Jamie L. Brummitt, author of Protestant Relics in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2025). In this talk, Dr. Brummitt explores how the people of early Vermont mourned for their family members by writing about their deathbeds and collecting their relics, such as locks of hair, family Bibles, clothes, jewelry, and other personal possessions. The talk features the deathbed and relic practices of the Reed family of Montpelier and the Higginson family of Brattleboro. Dr. Brummitt explains how these deathbed and relic practices related to broader trends in nineteenth-century Protestant mourning practices, especially those related to mourning for George Washington, the Protestant father of the American republic.
Dr. Jamie L. Brummitt is an Associate Professor of American religions at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Brummitt earned her PhD from Duke University. Her book Protestant Relics in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2025) examines relic veneration, corpse inspection, and the art of mourning in the early United States. In 2016-2017, Brummitt was the recipient of a research fellowship from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium and conducted research at the Vermont Historical Society.
