Each year the Historical Society of Pennsylvania awards one Esther Ann McFarland Fellowship in memory of Judge William Lewis for research on either 17th-century Pennsylvania, with a preference for research on New Sweden or on the influence of the early Swedish settlers on the development of Pennsylvania, or on African American history. The fellowship supports one month of residency in Philadelphia for advanced, postdoctoral, and dissertation research. The stipend is $2,500. The Library Company's Cassatt House fellows' residence offers rooms at reasonable rates, along with a kitchen, common room, and offices with internet access, available to resident and nonresident fellows at all hours

The Esther Ann McFarland Fellowship in memory of Judge William Lewis began in the 2011–2012 academic year and has been generously endowed by Esther Ann McFarland.

Current Fellow

• Meagan Wierda, PhD Candidate in History, Rutgers University, To Count and Be Counted: Quantifying Race during the Antebellum Era

Past Fellows

2017–2018

• Lewis Eliot, PhD Candidate in History, University of South Carolina, Abolitionism, Enslavement, and the Stateless Atlantic World, 1830–1868

2016–2017

• Jonathan Lande, PhD Candidate in History, Brown University, Disciplining Freedom: Union Army Slave Rebels and Emancipation in the Civil War Courts-Martial

2015–2016

• Dr. Alyssa Ribeiro, Research Scholar, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Making the City Brotherly: Black and Latino Community Activism in Philadelphia, 1960s to 1980s

2014–2015

• Nathan Jérémie-Brink, PhD Candidate in History, Loyola University Chicago, “Gratuitous Distribution”: Distributing African American Antislavery Texts, 1773–1845

2013–2014

• Dr. Richard Bell, Department of History, University of Maryland: Slavery's Black Market: A Microhistory

2012–2013

• Thomas Sheeler, PhD Candidate in History, University of Delaware: Negotiating Slavery on Mason and Dixon's Line:  Race, Section, and Union in Maryland and Pennsylvania before the Civil War

2011–2012

• Dr. James J. Gigantino II, Department of History, University of Arkansas: Freedom and Slavery in the Garden of America: African Americans and Abolition in New Jersey, 1775–1861