Colonial Dames members of the Mercer County Town Committee of The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in West Virginia, awarded the first Louisa Sowers History Scholarship to Miss Taylor Stiltner, a history education major at Bluefield University. Miss Stiltner will graduate in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and a minor in Religious Studies. The $800 scholarship was presented at a virtual awards ceremony in April at Bluefield College. The History Department, chaired by Ms. Wendy Beavers, selected the 2021 scholarship winner.

Louisa Sowers was a woman of honor and a 50-year member of NSCDA; and she served as president of the Mercer Society for over thirty years.

Miss Stiltner was honored Nov. 3, 2021, with a luncheon at Fincastle on the Mountain with five Mercer Dames attending: Co-chairs Cindy Gillespie and Rebecca Steorts; Delia Kersey, Secretary; Becky Beckett, Scholarship Chair; and Sheila Harris, Flag Service chair.

At the luncheon, Stiltner told members that she recently wrote a historical paper on patriot George Mason for professor Thomas Kinney’s American history class.

Mason was the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights and a signer of the U.S. Constitution. Patriots George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin met in the study of Mason’s home in Mason Neck, Virginia during the formative years of the founding of America.

Criteria for the Mercer County NSCDA-WV History Scholarship.