Historical Characters

Most characters can be adapted to ages 8 to adult. They are not scripted, so all of them can address a variety of topics based on audience need. To start the conversation, click the program title and reserve a date. There is no obligation until we have a contract.


SEARCH BY TOPIC HERE, OR BY CENTURY, BELOW

Innovators, Pioneers & Reformers
*Eliza Lucas Pinckney
*Dorothea Dix
*Harriott Stanton Blatch
*Amelia Earhart

Westward Movement, Manifest Destiny, Indian Removal Act
*Jane Long
*Civil War Women
*Alice Grierson

African-American History
Nearly every character addresses African-American history in some way, since African-Americans and history are inseparable.
The characters that specifically emphasize African-American history are:
*Elizabeth Spriggs
*Eliza Lucas Pinckney
*Frances Tasker Carter
*Cornelia McDonald
*Alice Grierson

18th CENTURY WOMEN

  • 1730s:  SARAH SPICER, housewife. Learn about early 18th century daily life in Cape May, New Jersey.
  • 1750s:  ELIZABETH SPRIGGS, indentured servant. Learn about the differences between enslavement and indentured servitude by meeting an indentured servant in Maryland.
  • 1760s:  ELIZA LUCAS PINCKNEY, innovator and mother of patriots Thomas and Charles Pinckney. As a teenager, Eliza Lucas established indigo production in South Carolina.
  • 1770s:   CATHERINE RATHELL, milliner (fashion boutique owner). Learn about colonial Virginia’s economic system, and how Revolutionary era politics affected business people.
  • 1780s:  FRANCES TASKER CARTER, mother of fourteen. Her husband, Robert Carter, was a member of the Virginia Royal Governor’s Council before the Revolution, and eventually emancipated more than 500 enslaved people – the largest individual emancipation in American history.
  • 1780s:  REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN. Meet camp follower Jane Walker, Loyalist spy Elizabeth Thompson and Patriot soldier Deborah Samson.

19th CENTURY WOMEN

  • 1811:    ANN HILL, fictitous wife of a merchant-sailor who was “pressed” into the British Navy. This program examines the issues that led to the War of 1812.
  • 1850: JANE LONG, MOTHER OF TEXAS. Meet the First Lady of Texas. Hear about Jane Long’s harrowing experiences when her husband stole Texas from Mexico in 1819, and her role in the 1836 creation of the Republic of Texas.
  • 1860:   DOROTHEA DIX, reformer. Learn about Dix’s investigation of conditions in mental hospitals, and her fight for improved treatment of the mentally ill.
  • 1863:   CIVIL WAR WOMEN: meet Union wife Alice Grierson and Confederate wife Cornelia McDonald as they contemplate the personal consequences of the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.  Learn what factors motivated people on both sides of this conflict.
  • 1870sLIFE WITH THE BUFFALO SOLDIERS.  Meet Alice Grierson, whose husband was a Union Cavalry hero, and commanded the 10th Cavalry (African-American) “Buffalo Soldiers” in Oklahoma and Texas after the Civil War.

20th CENTURY WOMEN

  • 1920:    VOTES FOR WOMEN! Meet Harriott Stanton Blatch, suffragist and daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as she waits to learn whether Tennessee will ratify the 20th Amendment, finally giving (some) American women the right to vote!
  • 1928:   THE SKY’S THE LIMIT: Join a British press conference greeting pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart on June 19, 1928, the day after she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air!


On the Oregon Trail, 2019