Lorraine McConaghy

Well, I'm a public historian, working at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry, as well as teaching in the University of Washington's Museology Department and offering presentations in Humanities Washington's Inquiring Mind series. To me, history is filled with fascinating people, places and stories, and I've loved the opportunity to explore them with visitors to the museum's exhibits and participants in the museum's programs. Through my books, I've hoped to convey that love of the past, and encourage my readers to go to work on their own history research. If I do my job well, my readers become my colleagues.

I grew up in northern New Jersey, and my friends and I thought of New York City as our second home. Nearly every Saturday, we took the bus in to the city, and just walked and walked, exploring the museums, the 1964 world's fair, and the nooks and crannies of New York itself. I was lucky enough to gain a scholarship to New York University at Washington Square, and thoroughly enjoyed living in Greenwich Village.

Throughout my life, I'd always volunteered at historical societies and museums. In the early 1980s, when our children were quite young, my husband and I decided that we could manage my graduate study at the University of Washington, so that I could pursue a career as a museum professional. I like the idea that we study the past to make the present make sense, so that we can make better choices for the future. To mean, this notion gives meaning and signficance to the doing of history, and has informed my work in public history as a student and as a professional.

My current research and writing concerns the Civil War in Washington Territory. I like finding hidden stories, and it's been my pleasure to tease out the narrative of the territory's experience of race and slavery, treason and secession, and the suppression of civil liberties during the war. I've recently returned from completing a fellowship at the Kentucky Historical Society, to research the biography of Washington Territory's third governor, who became an officer in the Confederate army.

My books, from Raise Hell and Sell Newspapers to Warship Under Sail and New Land North of the Columbia, have allowed me to engage with the past as a scholar and to share my work with a wide range of readers. Warship Under Sail explored the world of the antebellum Navy through deep research in the Old Navy records at the National Archives. New Land North of the Columbia explored Washington Territory and State, from 1853 to the present, through research in our shared archival heritage.

It's fun to have the chance here at Amazon's AuthorCentral, to meet more readers. I look forward to chatting with you.