My next projects

My next history projects set for publication include: "Reflections on Settler Colonialism," in the Fall 2024 issue of the Middle West Review; "Tippecanoe: An American Epic," a look at Harrison's 1840 campaign as an epic retelling of his battle against Tecumseh, in Where East Meets (Mid)West: Exploring a Regional Divide (Kent State University Press, 2025); "Edith Wilson: My Memoir," a study of the autobiography of Edith Wilson (Woodrow Wilson's 2nd wife), in In Her Own Voice: How First Ladies Use Autobiography to Tell Their Own Stories (University Press of Kansas, 2025); essay on the "Marquis de Lafayette," Encyclopedia Virginia (in honor of the 200th anniversary of his visit to the United States in 1824); and "Edith Wilson: Chief of Staff," for the White House Historical Quarterly (2027).

Mary Stockwell

My story

I am a writer who has lived most of my life in the 12-mile by 12-mile square block carved out around Fort Miamis on the Maumee River that Anthony Wayne purchased from the Indians in the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795. I got my love of history from my father, John Stockwell, who was proud of his Irish heritage and who often took my sisters Kathleen and Roberta, my brother John, and myself to visit the remnants of 19th century canals built in northwest Ohio, reminding us that our ancestors came to this country to build them and for the freedom and opportunity that America promised. I got my love of storytelling from my mother, Elizabeth Schultz Stockwell, who came from a long line of Polish and Bohemian storytellers. She was a method actress, who taught her children about Stanislavsky from little on, a director, a prize-winning poet, an English teacher, and a speech and acting professor.

My training

I received my B.A. in history from Mary Manse College and my M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Toledo where I was the last student of W. Eugene Hollon, the noted historian of the American West, a teacher-scholar and great writer who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book The Southwest: Old and New. After graduation, I worked as a writer at the Fermi II Nuclear Power Station where I wrote the instructions to operate and secure the plant. I later became a history professor and a department chair at Lourdes University in Sylvania, Ohio. I said goodbye to my teaching and administrative career to accept the first of two Earhart Foundation Fellowships at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan and to become a full-time writer.

My books

I am the author of history books used by young people throughout the United States including The Ohio Adventure, A Journey through Maine, and Massachusetts, Our Home, the 2005 winner of the Golden Lamp Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for Best Book. I am also the author of The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians, a 2016 finalist for the Ohio Library Association's Best Book Award; Woodrow Wilson: The Last Romantic in the First Men: America’s Presidents Series, a 2018 Dartmouth Medal nominee; and The American Story: Perspectives and Encounters to 1865 for Bridgepoint Education.  My essays on George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe and his wife Elizabeth Kortright, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt have appeared in major scholarly studies. I have written for the website of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate. My essay, “Most Loyal but Forgotten Son: Anthony Wayne and George Washington,” appeared in Sons of the Father: Washington and his Protégés (University of Virginia Press, 2013). My latest books are Unlikely General: "Mad" Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America (Yale University Press, 2018), and Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018).