2026 Florence Kidder Scholarship Winners
This year, we received 154 applications for our scholarship program. Applicants were asked to respond to the topic, “Exploring the Voices of Early Carolina: Life, Hardship and Settlement Through Primary Sources.” Each essay submitted was thoughtful, well-researched, and engaging.
The topic challenged students to examine four seventeenth-century primary sources to gain a deeper understanding of daily life, settlement, and survival in early Carolina during the earliest years of English exploration and colonization. Drawing upon the writings of William Hilton, Robert Horne, Samuel Wilson, and Thomas Newe, students analyzed firsthand accounts that reveal both the opportunities and difficulties encountered by those seeking to establish a colony in the region.
Particular attention was given to the hardships colonists faced as they adapted to an unfamiliar environment, including challenges related to food, disease, supplies, and the natural landscape. Students were also encouraged to consider the experiences of Indigenous peoples and the impact that English settlement had on Native communities. Through these narratives, participants explored the complex realities of life in early Carolina and demonstrated a thoughtful engagement with the colony’s formative history.
The scholarship was awarded based on merit of the individual essay (75%), scholarship and character (20%), and need (5%).
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The first place $3,000 winner this year is Yasmeen Fathima.
In her essay, A Man Gone, a Colony Promised, she analyzes the early English accounts of Carolina and shows how these writings functioned both as firsthand records of colonial life and as advertisements meant to attract settlers. Through these narratives, Fathima argues that early settlement was a continual negotiation with the environment, labor demands, disease, and power, and that despite the writers’ efforts to promote Carolina, their descriptions ultimately reveal the hardships and uncertainties that shaped the colony’s beginnings. She is a graduate of Apex High School and will be attending UNC-Chapel Hill.
Read her essay here.
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The second place $1000 winner is Joshy Ishaan, who is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Math and Science in Morganton and will attend UNC-Chapel Hill.
His essay, Between “Rich Ground” and “Breakers”: The Price of Carolina’s Promise, argues that while early accounts of Carolina promoted the region as a land of fertile soil, economic opportunity, and abundant resources, they also revealed the significant hardships that accompanied settlement.
Read his essay here.
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The third place $800 award goes to W. Owen Hancock. In his essay, Exploring the Voices of Early Carolina: Life, Hardship, and Settlement Through Primary Sources, Hancock showed how these sources provide a more complete understanding of colonial life while also highlighting the lasting disruptions and hardships experienced by Native communities as European settlement expanded.
Owen attended Richmond Early College High School and has been accepted to NC State for the fall.
Read his essay here.
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Our Three Fourth Place Winners
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