Falling in Love with History

Hi, all! While this is not my first contribution to the PASTimes blog, this is my first post as a regular contributing member. So, I thought perhaps I should explain why I’m here.

In my early teens, I began a life-long love affair with history. It was not because of a wonderful teacher who made it come alive in the classroom (she came later, in high school). Nor did it stem from living in the Old West near historic Old Mesilla, New Mexico, where the “ghosts” of Billy the Kid or Kit Carson seemed to stroll the streets.

No. My love—passion—for history was born when I read a book entitled Kathleen that I ordered from the Scholastic book order form at school, because the name was so close to my own. When I received it a few weeks later, I devoured it. Now, I had always been a reader, but before this, my bookshelves were filled with Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books, stories about horses or dogs, and Nancy Drew. When I read Kathleen, though, I was transported to another time and place as I never had been before. You see, Kathleen was a YA historical romance, the story of an Irish girl escaping the potato famine and starting a new life as a servant in Boston (where she falls in love with the wealthy family’s son, naturally).

I was so exhilarated by this book, I immediately re-read it. I then discovered a list of other Sunfire Romances in the front and promptly set about finding them. Each was set in a different era, many involving the characters in major historic events such as the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the fall of Richmond in 1865, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Alamo, the Alaska purchase, and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. As I read these novels, I started paying more attention in my history classes when I realized the teachers were talking about the events these characters I loved so much were involved in—so much so that when I went to college, I majored in Education, thinking I would become a high school Social Studies teacher.

But I quickly discovered I was not in love with ALL history—just certain parts of it. (And civics and political history? Please, spare me!) I also learned that I liked reading novels and writing stories more than anything else. So I switched my major to English/creative writing, but kept history as my minor—that way I could still take a bunch of history classes, but I would get to take only the ones that interested me. At that time, Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary had just come out, and my parents lived in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Manassas (Bull Run) battlefields. And, LSU was the school where the top Civil War scholars and experts were part of the History faculty. When I left LSU, I lived in NoVA for about four years and got to visit so many of these sites: Manassas (Bull Run), VA; Sharpsburg (Antietam), MD; Gettysburg, PA (several times, and once took a horseback tour of the battlefield); Harper’s Ferry, WV; Winchester, VA; Chantilly, VA (where I lived); Fair Oaks, VA; and, of course, Washington, DC, itself. History came to life for me as, along with my dad—an expert in military history—I surveyed the actual places where history happened.

Now, many years later, while I still love visiting Civil War sites (and there are plenty I’ve still yet to see here in Middle Tennessee) and reading novels set in the era, my latest passion is Regency England. While most of the history I’ve had to learn on my own, not having taken any British history courses (but plenty in British Lit!), the passion I’ve developed for learning of different times, along with the research skills honed by years of study and writing academic papers, has fueled my desire to pass on my love of history through story and character…just as those Sunfire Romance authors did for me so long ago.