In with the old, onto the new

Welcome to my blog!

On April 1, 2010, Cape Fear Museum opened our new exhibition, Cape Fear Stories: Land of the Longleaf Pine.

For me, the opening was the culmination of the first five years of my work at the Museum. Doing research into the history of Native Americans in the region, and into the Naval Stores business in the 18th century was really fascinating for me. My background is in 20th century U.S. history (I wrote my dissertation on women who worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad durign World War I), so it was challenging to delve into a world filled with potsherds, pipkins, firkins, and pieces of eight.

In a great piece of synchronicity, on the very same day the exhibition opened, I got an email from Georgia, letting me know that I'd won a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship that allows me to attend a seminar The American Civil War at 150: New Approaches"

In this blog, I'm going to write about preparing to go to Savannah, and my experiences of my month-long immersion in the history of the Civil War.