I’m a Western Massachusetts historian, researcher, and public speaker whose work focuses on the experiences of ordinary people during periods of major social change in American history. My principal interests range from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on Shays’ Rebellion, the American Civil War, the reform movements of the Progressive Era, and the development of nineteenth-century “base ball.”
My approach to history is bottom-up. I’m less interested in beginning with presidents, generals, and other famous figures than I am in the people whose lives are usually found in letters, diaries, pension files, newspapers, military records, family papers, and local archives. I use those individual stories to illuminate the larger events around them.
My own education has also shaped the way I approach public history. I am a first-generation college graduate and a nontraditional student. I completed undergraduate work in American Studies through the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s University Without Walls program and later pursued graduate study in history and history education at Westfield State University. Because my academic path came later in life and alongside an established career and years of independent historical research, I have been invited to speak about the experience of returning to higher education as an adult and as a first-generation student. UMass University Without Walls has also invited me back periodically to speak with incoming students about the opportunities and challenges of nontraditional education.
That experience informs the way I think about both history and teaching. Scholarship should be rigorous, but it should also be understandable and useful beyond the classroom. I try to bring archival research, local history, living history, and storytelling together in a way that gives audiences a direct connection to the people of the past.
I often describe history as a mosaic. The familiar names and major events form the image we recognize from a distance, but that image is made from thousands of smaller pieces. Each of those pieces represents an individual life—a soldier, farmer, worker, reformer, family member, or ballplayer whose choices and experiences shaped the people around them.
My work is about finding those pieces and helping audiences see how much of the larger picture depends on them.