Speakers

Use our extensive network of dynamic and scholarly experts to speak at your next event, meeting, or conference; WE MAKE THE REVOLUTION COME ALIVE FOR YOU…Contact us for their information!

Dr. Dennis M. Conrad
      Dr. Dennis Conrad works as an historian at the early history branch of the Naval Historical Center. There he helps edit the Naval Documents of the American Revolution series. Prior to coming to the NHC, he served as editor and project director of the monumental Papers of General Nathanael Greene. He directed the completion of volumes 7 through 12 of that series covering Greene’s campaigns in the South. He also served as contributing editor for volume 13, the final volume in the series that was published late last year. Gen. Greene was also the subject of Conrad’s doctoral dissertation at Duke University. Dennis also wrote on John Paul Jones with E. Gordon Bowen-Hassell and Mark L. Hayes in Sea Raiders of the American Revolution: The Continental Navy in European Waters.

Dr. Lee F. McGee
      Dr. Lee McGee is a physician and historian who published insightful articles on the Battle of Hammond’s Store, Lt. Col. William Washington’s capture of Rugeley’s Fort, and the cavalry actions at Eutaw Springs and Hobkirk’s Hill.

Charles F. Price
      Charles Price, novelist, is the author of the Hiwassee series, four works of historical fiction set in his native western North Carolina. Hiwassee: A Novel of the Civil War; Freedom’s Altar (won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award as the best fiction of 1999); The Cock’s Spur (Independent Publisher Book Award and the Historical Fiction Award of the North Carolina Society of Historians); and Where the Water-Dogs Laughed (Society of Historians’ award, nominee for Sir Walter Raleigh Award, and was a first finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award.) Price was named Story Teller of the Year. Price has been a Washington lobbyist, management consultant, urban planner, and journalist. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from High Point University. His novel about Nathanael Greene's 1781 South Carolina campaigns, Nor the Battle to the Strong, will be published in 2007.

Dr. Jim Piecuch
     Dr. Jim Piecuch received his Ph.D. in history from the College of William and Mary. His dissertation, "Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, Slaves and the American Revolution in the Deep South," is the first study of the Southern Campaigns undertaken from the viewpoint of the British and their supporters. He is also the author of five articles and book chapters on colonial and revolutionary history, and contributed articles to several historical encyclopedias. Jim has written a compendium of accounts of the Battle of Camden and serves as an assistant history professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

Robert “Bert” M. Dunkerly
      Bert Dunkerly holds a degree in history from St. Vincent College and a MA in historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Bert is a contributor to Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution and serves as a park ranger at Kings Mountain National Military Park. His books include More than Roman Valor and Kings Mountain Walking Tour Guide and Old Ninety Six written with Eric K. Williams.

Dr. Christine R. Swager
      Christine Swager is a retired professor of education, storyteller and author of three award winning youth books on the Southern Campaign: Black Crows and White Cockades, If Ever Your Country Needs You, and Come to the Cow Pens! Her latest book, aimed at general readers, The Valiant Died is the first modern study that covers in detail the Eutaws Campaign of Gen. Nathanael Greene. Born in Canada, a descendent of both an American who served with the British Army and settled in Canada after the war, and Continental soldiers who fought in Connecticut and Maine. Being in an area settled by tens of thousands of Loyalists, Chris reports that she grew up knowing that there had been a sizable Tory resistance and a bitter civil war during the Revolution. Chris is a highly sought speaker, commentator and newspaper columnist.

The Rev. John Franklin Scott
     John Scott is Rector of The Historic Church of the Epiphany, near Lake Marion, in Eutawville, SC. Father Scott is a native of Mobile, Alabama where he was educated in the Parochial School System. He is a graduate of St. Mary's University, Baltimore, Maryland. He was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest for the Archdiocese of Mobile, Al. in 1962. He resigned from the active ministry in 1969, petitioned for and received a Papal Dispensation from priestly vows, married and continued to serve his church as a layman. In 1985 he and his wife were received into the Episcopal Church at Christ Church, Mobile. In 1992 John and his wife, Toni were sent to The Anglican Studies Program at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. by the Central Gulf Coast Diocese. He was received as a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1993 and accepted the call to The Church of the Epiphany in the Diocese of South Carolina. In 2002 Fr. John was Appointed Dean of the Orangeburg Deanery. John and his wife, Toni have three grown children and two grandchildren, all living out of State.

Charles B. Baxley
      Charles Baxley earned a B.A. and J.D. from the University of South Carolina. He is a practicing attorney in Lugoff, SC, and is the publisher and editor of the magazine, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. Charles has served as president of the Kershaw County Historical Society, numerous local civic and charitable organizations, a USAF reserve officer, a Municipal Judge, adjunct professor of law, and as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Kershaw County public school system. Charles likes to "put the action on the ground" and has served as a planner, host, and tour guide at the Tarleton, Camden Campaign, Thomas Sumter, and the Nathanael Greene Symposia, for US Army staff rides, and other tours of Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War sites. He is the co-founder of the Southern Campaigns Roundtable, Corps of Discovery tour group, and the Archaeological Reconnaissance and Computerization of Hobkirk’s Hill battlefield (ARCHH, Inc.) project. Charles is the chair of the Battle of Camden battlefield preservation project advisory council.

David Reuwer
      David Reuwer earned a J.D. from Pepperdine University and a B.A. from Towson University. David is an historian and practicing attorney, emphasizing real estate and historic preservation law. He was an adjunct professor of historic preservation at the College of Charleston. He was the lead investigator of the initial Eutaw Springs battlefield survey and is the associate editor of the magazine, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution. David is an engaging Southern Campaigns battlefield tour guide who co-planned and led the Camden Campaign, Thomas Sumter and Nathanael Greene Symposia tours, for US Army staff rides, and other tours of Southern Campaigns Revolutionary War sites. He is the co-founder of the Southern Campaigns Roundtable, Corps of Discovery tour groups, and the Archaeological Reconnaissance and Computerization of Hobkirk’s Hill battlefield (ARCHH, Inc.) project.

Dr. Irene Boland
      Irene Boland has a PhD in Geology from the University of South Carolina and is an Associate Professor of Geology at Winthrop University. Her areas of expertise and research are structural geology, the geologic history and tectonic evolution of the Southern Appalachians, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain, and the influence of geology on troop movements and strategy during the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War.

Steven J. Rauch
      Steven Rauch is the Command Historian at the US Army Signal Center at Fort Gordon, Georgia. He is a retired Army officer who has written and taught military history at the US Army Command and General Staff College, the University of Michigan, and the US Army Ordnance School. Steve holds BS and MA degrees in history from Eastern Michigan University where he specialized in early American history, particularly the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He has conducted numerous military staff rides to battlefield sites related to the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, US Civil War, Plains Indian Wars, and the Korean War as part of the US Army Staff Ride program. Steve published numerous essays in several multi-volume military history encyclopedias, including the Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War to be published by ABC-CLIO. He is an adjunct instructor at Augusta State University where he teaches courses on American Military History and the United States to 1877.

Scott Butler
      Scott Butler , (M.H.P., University of Georgia, RPA) has served as a Brockington and Associates archaeologist, historian and project manager since joining the firm in 1990. Long an historian of military strategy, tactics, equipment, and weapons, Scott specializes in the archaeology of forts, battlefields and military encampments. He has compiled a base of comparative historical and archaeological data for military sites, as well as developed effective field methods to discover and record them. He is Director of the Flank Company (www.theflankcompany.com), a division of Brockington and Associates that focuses on research, identification, and evaluation of military-related historic properties. Scott is a company Vice President and serves as a senior project manager in Brockington and Associate’s Atlanta office.

Dr. George Fields
      George Fields, Director of the Military Heritage Program of the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, provided advocacy and leadership for successful programs to preserve the following Revolutionary War battlefields in South Carolina: Battle of Camden, Musgrove Mill State Historic Site, Blackstock’s State Historic Site, Snow Island, and Lee’s Trenches at Ninety-Six National Historic Site. The program has also assisted in various improvement programs at Cowpens National Battlefield, Earle’s Ford Battlefield, Eutaw Springs, Fish Dam Ford Battlefield, Cedar Springs, and Fort Charlotte. Dr. Fields is a native of Lamar, SC and a graduate of Wofford College, Emory University, and three senior military colleges and universities. He has been an advocate for preservation of battlefields since his retirement in 1997 as a United Methodist Church Minister and President of Spartanburg Methodist College. He is also a retired army Brigadier General with 43 years of active and reserve duty in the artillery, infantry, and Chaplaincy. He and his wife Mildred live in Spartanburg and have four adult children and four grandchildren.

Dr. Robert M. Calhoon has been a professor of History at University of North Carolina Greensboro since 1974, having received a Ph.D. in history from Western Reserve University in 1964. He is the author of The Loyalist Perception (1989) and The Loyalists in Revolutionary America (1973); Religion in the American Revolution in North Carolina; Evangelicals and Conservatives in the Early South; The Loyalists Perception and Other Essays; Dominion and Liberty: Ideology in the Anglo-American World (1660-1801); and numerous scholarly articles and encyclopedia entries.

Jim McIntyre was a presenter at our 2004 Camden Battle Campaign Symposium. An Instructor in History at Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills, Illinois, Jim received his Bachelor of Arts in history from Temple University and a Master of Arts in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of “Bringing Order to Chaos: Military Works of the Eighteenth Century Considered as Enlightenment Literature” and other articles published in The Seven Years War Association Journal (2004); a contributor to Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution; and a member of the Society for Military History and Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society.

Dr. Gregory D. Massey earned a Ph.D. in History from the University of South Carolina in 1992. He is the author of John Laurens and the American Revolution (2000) for which received the American Revolution Round Table of New York’s Book Award in 2001. Greg is Professor of History, Freed-Hardeman University, Henderson, Tennessee.

Dr. Lawrence E. Babits
     Lawrence Babits, professor of maritime archaeology at East Carolina University, is the author of A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens (1998), Cowpens Battlefield - A Walking Guide (1993), and articles in Documentary Archaeology in the New World, Archaeology, and the Maryland Historical Magazine. Larry serves as senior advisor to the Hobkirk’s Hill Battlefield Archaeology Project (ARCHH) and currently preparing monographs on the Battles at Guilford Courthouse, Hobkirk’s Hill and Eutaw Springs with Josh Howard and Matt Brenckle. Larry along with Josh Howard wrote Fortitude and Forbearance – the North Carolina Line in the Revolutionary War (NC Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh 2004).

Seabrook Wilkinson
      After an undergraduate degree in History of Art at Harvard, Charles Pinckney Seabrook Wilkinson did graduate work in History at the University of South Carolina under Robert Weir for a year before proceeding to Oxford for degrees in Theology. Now finishing a dissertation in English, he writes historical articles and reviews for the Charleston Mercury, of which he is Copy Editor. His first collection of poems, A Local Habitation, is in press.

John Maass
     John Maass is currently in the history Ph.D. program for Early American History at the Ohio State University. He is the author of “All this Poor Province Could Do: North Carolina and the Seven Years War, 1757-1762,” The North Carolina Historical Review, January 2002; "To Disturb the Assembly: Tarleton's Charlottesville Raid and the British Invasion of Virginia, 1781,” Virginia Cavalcade, Autumn 2000; That Unhappy Affair:” Horatio Gates and the Battle of Camden (2001) published by the Kershaw County (SC) Historical Society; and "The American Militia in the South: from Camden to Guilford Courthouse," Muzzleloader, November/December 2001. John was the program coordinator for the Banastre Tarleton and Camden Campaign symposia.

Joanna B. Craig serves as Executive Director of Historic Camden Revolutionary War Site, chief planner and hostess of the Revolutionary War Field Days held each November at Historic Camden, their school programs, Lyceum talks, and other colonial era programs. She served as a planner, hostess, and symposium coordinator of the Tarleton, Camden Campaign, and Thomas Sumter Symposia. Joanna also serves on the regional tourists planning agency and on the Executive Committee of the Battle of Camden battlefield preservation project advisory council.

Howard Burnham
      Howard Burnham born in England claims American blood from his paternal grandfather, a much-traveled Californian mining engineer, who married a British girl in South Africa during the Boer War and is buried in Cannes, France, beside Admiral de Grasse, the man who made Yorktown possible. His great-uncle, Frederick R. Burnham, a scout and explorer, warrants an entry in the American Dictionary of National Biography. Burnham’s namesake ancestor, First Lieutenant Howard Burnham, U.S.A., was killed on the first day at Chickamauga. The present Howard was educated at Clayesmore School, Dorset, and at University College in the University of Durham, where he took honors in Modern History. He has worked as an actor, educator and museum curator. In 1973 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London. He is the author of Grones Dictionary of Music or Misleading Lives of the Great Composers (Emerson Edition) and several more accurate booklets on theater history, published by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. He began performing his acclaimed dramatic monologues in 1981 when he depicted John Aubrey, the 17th century antiquary and gossip. Subsequent one-man shows has featured Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Charles Dickens, the French romantic poet Theophile Gautier, Laurence Sterne, “the Unfortunate Doctor Dodd” (Shakespeare’s first anthologist), Joseph Rowntree the Quaker philanthropist, and Thomas Hardy. Howard’s American Revolutionary War programs include Never Play Hockey With A Bishop: Lord Cornwallis in the South (which has played repeatedly at every major site associated with the earl’s campaign,) and characterizations of Banastre Tarleton, Tom Paine, Horatio Gates and Thomas Sumter. His companion piece to Lord Cornwallis: Thirty Wagons and a Wine Cellar: Johnny Burgoyne and Saratoga plays annually at Bunker Hill, Fort Ticonderoga and Saratoga. He has a War of 1812 twelve program: The British kept a-running: Sir John Lambert on Andy Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans. His Civil War one-man show, The Lion, the Eagle and Dixie: A British Perspective on the War between the States as seen by the Artist-Journalist, Frank Vizetelly,has played at Shiloh Military Park, the SC State Museum and Manassas Battlefield. His most recent shows have been on Winston Churchill, Captain Smith of the Titanic, Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. He is currently preparing characterizations of Lord Rawdon for Ninety-Six, and the Duke of Wellington for the State Museum’s up-coming Napoleon exhibit.

Thomas Sumter Tisdale, Jr. Tom, a direct descendant of Thomas Sumter, is an attorney in the firm Nexsen, Pruet Adams Kleemeier, PLLC’s Charleston, SC office. He is the author of A Lady of the High Hills, a history of Natalie Delage Sumter, the French noble born wife of Thomas Sumter, Jr., which was published by USC Press in October 2001. A former president of the South Carolina Bar, he was also president of the Charleston Lawyers Club and a member of the Supreme Court Commission on Grievances and Discipline, the Supreme Court Commission on Continuing Lawyer Competency, the South Carolina Law Institute, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution. Tisdale has served on the Board of Regents of the University of the South and the Board of Trustees of Voorhees College; as chairman of the Board of Trustees of Porter-Gaud School; and on the boards of the South Carolina Aquarium and Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA. He was also chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina from 1975-1985. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of the South and his J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

Jeffrey W. Dennis Jeff serves as an Assistant Professor of History at Morehead State University, Kentucky. Jeff earned his Ph.D. and M. A. in History from the University of Notre Dame and a M.A. and B.A. in History from Andrews University. Jeff's research explores the relationships between the southern Revolutionary elite and Native Americans. "Perhaps the most unique experience with Indians among Carolina revolutionaries was that of Thomas Sumter. During 1761-63, Sumter helped escort the Cherokee Second Warrior Ostenaco and two other headmen to London and back for a meeting with the young King George III. The year-and-a-half adventure left Sumter with lasting respect and tolerance for native peoples. Further, it was this expedition that enabled Sumter to escape debt and obscurity in Virginia to later become the famed "Gamecock" of the South Carolina Revolution." Jeff has three forthcoming essays in Colonial American Fortifications (2004), V. Deplannes, editor: "Fort Prince George and the Lower Cherokee Settlements", "Fort Ninety-Six and the Anglo-Cherokee War", and "Fort William Henry Lyttleton".

Dan L. Morrill
     Dan Morrill received his Ph.D. in history from Emory University in 1964 and now serves as a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dan has developed a major interest in public history, especially historic preservation. As Consulting Director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission since 1974, he has authored more than 100 Survey and Research Reports on prospective historic landmarks, has administered design review over restoration projects, has overseen the renovation of historic structures, and has prepared nominations for the National Register Places. Dan draws upon his extensive knowledge when teaching undergraduate courses in historic preservation. He is also active in military history. His book, Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution was published in 1994 and Historic Charlotte, an Illustrated History of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Civil War In The Carolinas was published in 2001. Dan’s current project: Oral History of Participants in World War Two.

Thomas L. Powers Tom serves as a Professor of History at the University of South Carolina at Sumter. Tom earned a B.A. in history at the University of Richmond in 1969 and his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1978. Tom teaches American History. He has moderated presenter panels at the Camden Campaign Symposium and the Francis Marion Symposium.

Carl Borick The Assistant Director of the Charleston Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, Carl is a CPA and also holds a Master’s Degree in History from the University of Alabama. With a lifelong interest in the American Revolutionary War, he has served as a volunteer history interpreter for the National Park Service and has lectured extensively on the American Revolution. Beginning in June 2003, Carl has served as curator for a special exhibition at the Charleston Museum which included Revolutionary War artifacts and images from museums and archives in the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the United States. Carl’s book, A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780, was published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2003.

Todd Braisted Todd is the founder of www.royalprovincial.com, an extensive web based study of Loyalist in the American Revolution. He organized, planned and executed the first-ever "School of the Loyalist" in July, 1997 at Historic New Bridge Landing, River Edge, New Jersey. He served as Chairman of the Retreat to Victory Committee, celebrating the 225th anniversary of the American Revolution in Bergen County, New Jersey. He is a member of the Company of Military Historians, the Bergen County Historical Society, and the Bergen County Revolutionary War Roundtable. He has lectured at the Brigade of the American Revolution School of Instruction (1998); King's Mountain National Park (2000); Manhattan Night Chapter DAR (2001); Hunterdon Historical Museum (2000, 2001); Princeton University (2002) and the Historic Camden/Kershaw County Historical Society's Banastre Tarleton Symposium (2002). Todd lives in NJ and is a living historian with the 4th Battalion, New Jersey Volunteers.

Jay Callaham
      After receiving his BA in History from North Georgia College, Jay served on the Faculty and Staff of US Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS. He also served as Historical Consultant to the National Park Service in production of "Another Such Victory," a documentary film shown at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. He is a long time reenactor.

John W. "Bill" Gordon Bill is a professor of national security affairs at the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia. Formerly a professor of history and dean of undergraduate studies at The Citadel, he is the author of The Other Desert War: British Special Forces in North Africa, 1940–1943 and South Carolina and the American Revolution, A Battlefield History.

Holly A. Mayer
      Holly Mayer (Ph.D. William and Mary) is Associate Professor of History at Duquesne University. Holly's major teaching and research field is Colonial America. Her book on the role of camp followers and the development of a military community in the Continental Army, Belonging to the Army was published by the University of South Carolina Press in 1997. Her next research project will study the impact of the Continental Army in creating a sense of national identity. She also edited a reader, For the Record: A Documentary History of America (co-authored with David E. Shi, W.W. Norton & Co, 1999, 2003), on U.S. history from colonial times through the Civil War.