Why History? Part 1

So the first few parts of “Why History” are going to be autobiographical, but then we’ll get into some actual concepts and maybe even some historiography! Plus, we will explore in depth some of my favorite parts of history and talk about writing a thesis. Here goes….

I got started loving history at an early age, which isn’t surprising if you’ve ever met my dad. He’s a huge American Civil War buff; we had paintings of generals and battles all over our house (both Union and Confederate), a Confederate Generals coffee mug, actual letters written by our ancestor Amos Camden Riley who died fighting for the Confederacy in Georgia, and my dad has portraits of Lincoln and Grant next to his bed. So yeah. Civil War history is all over our house. Seriously, how many children learn to play chess on a Civil War chess set? Not many.

But oddly enough, Civil War history didn’t really strike the same chord with me as it did with my dad. I like it fine, but I really got into the history of the American Revolution when I was about eight years old and never went back… well, I did go back… further in time and to another continent… but the American Revolution still plays a large part in what I study and where I chose to spend the last six years of my life.

You see, I fell in love with the American Girl Felicity Merriman. I saw her picture in a catalog and knew I had to have her. I read all of her books, which are set in Williamsburg, Virginia, during its colonial/early Revolutionary period, and when I was about ten years old my parents brought me to Colonial Williamsburg for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the place. Clutching my Felicity doll, I wandered up and down Duke of Gloucester Street taking in the sights. I learned to play with a hoop and stick and was rewarded for my skill with a silver musket ball from a reinactor (he gave it to me, he didn’t shoot it at me). I dressed in a little eighteenth-century dress, and we spent an afternoon with Felicity’s teacher, “Mrs. Manderly.” She taught us the proper way of performing the tea service, but of course I took hot chocolate like a true patriot (though now I see that the books left out a ton of complexities about “patriot” and “loyalist” and also you wouldn’t give a child chocolate in the eighteenth-century… but whatever, as a kid they shaped my life).

Most importantly, after I read about Felicity wishing she could go to William and Mary (it was for boys only in the eighteenth century), I knew that’s where I wanted to go. I even wrote about Felicity in my college entrance essay when I was seventeen. So in a way, this one simple American Girl doll influenced the course of my whole life up to now…

But not entirely. Because at age eleven, my dad took me to see the movie Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes. And thus began a whole new phase in my historical timeline.

To be continued…