Mary Chapman (Photo: Paul Joseph)

Rebecca Roberts

Mary Chapman and Rebecca Roberts are the winners of the 2025 Robert and Ina Caro Travel Fellowships for travel. They will receive $5,000 each for research trips to archives or other significant locations in their subjects’ lives.

Chapman is writing Go-Away Girls: How an Enslaved Chinese Child Acrobat Inspired Her Daughter, Sui Sin Far, and Asian American Literature, a dual biography of Edith Eaton and her mother, which sheds light on their pioneering strategies for survival and success.

Roberts is writing a book about Rose Cleveland, sister of Grover Cleveland, teacher, writer, lecturer, women’s rights activist, acting First Lady from 1885-1886,  and, most remarkably perhaps, “America’s first gay First Lady.”   

The 2025 Caro Travel Fellowship Committee members were Carla Kaplan (chair), Marc Leepson, and Susan Page.