Ryan Falkin: Love in Roebling

Spring 2026 Undergraduate Public History Intern

Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Ryan Falkin was one of our undergraduate interns during the spring 2026 semester. Their internship consisted of three parts:

  • Selecting a Roebling research topic for the development of a prospective museum exhibit. They selected artifacts to display, determined the main goals of the exhibit, and proposed a budget for exhibit materials.

  • Learning about collections management and archival software.

  • Presenting their research project to the public via an online presentation and a written blog post.

    Ryan wrote the following piece reflecting on their time at Roebling Museum. We hope you enjoy reading it!

This semester, I interned at the Roebling Museum in Roebling, NJ, as part of Rutgers University’s Public History Internship Program. I came into my time at the Roebling interested in researching women’s and labor history, specifically the ways these two overlapped both in the mill and on the streets of the industrial town as women served as custodians of cultural enclaves and religious communities. The real heart of my research was the underappreciated, invisible labor (domestic or otherwise) that everyday Roebling women performed to sustain the town and its communities.

As my research evolved, the parameters of my focus shifted. I narrowed down my topic to “Love in Roebling” with a specific focus on women’s perspectives. The main questions of my research were:

  • What is the role of love and marriage in a company town?

  • What was the role of young women in a company town?

Overall, my research highlighted the significance of married women not only as mothers and wives, but also foundational pillars of the community. In the museum’s collection, I read oral histories with women (Tina Masiko, Alice Mae Agostinelli) who talked about how they met their husbands. Then I looked for sources and artifacts related to youth culture, courtship, and company promotion of marriage and domesticity. Materials from the Holy Assumption Roman Catholic Church in town also revealed how religion shaped the rituals of these relationships. As I designed my exhibit, I began to view every relationship in Roebling as a microhistory: a piece of the puzzle of the company town’s story. I hope that museum guests emotionally connect with the stories of each couple.

My time in Roebling has been a fantastic opportunity to learn about what goes on behind the scenes at a community history museum. Creating “Love in Roebling,” I got to conduct applied historical research and become a mini-curator. I gained significant experience working with archiving software PastPerfect. This taught me a lot about how institutional archival collections operate, particularly in a museum that receives many donations from the community. I also connected with and learned from professionals in my field. Working with Sarah and Lynne has given me a much better understanding of the day-to-day lives of actual public historians. More than anything, this internship has shown me how passionate I am about this work and how much I look forward to carving out a future for myself in this field.