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CONTRIBUTOR'S BIOGRAPHIES

Thomas Best has taught American history to seventh-grade students at Central Junior High School in Monmouth, Illinois, for twenty years. He also is a part-time instructor of the Civil War and Secondary Social Studies Methods courses at Monmouth College. He holds a master's degree from Western Illinois University, is a member of the state board of the Illinois Council for the Social Studies, and continues to work on his book about Charles "Lonesome Charley" Reynolds, George Custer's chief civilian scout, who was born in Warren County.

Don Cavallini is retired from Lexington High School after a thirty-four year teaching career. He currently is employed by Heartland Community College as the Director of Outreach. He also serves as a member of the McLean County Board.

David E. Goss is a graduate of Eureka College, Vanderbilt University, and Illinois State University where he completed the thesis "The Ku Klux Klan in Illinois." Retired in 2003 from Ewing-Northern School where he was a middle-school teacher of social science and language arts, he has put the research and writings of his students and himself into a book form, resulting in histories of Ewing, Macedonia, Whittington, and Northern Township (Franklin County), Illinois. After completing research on Ewing Township (Franklin County), he plans to write and publish another multi-volume history.

Dan Monroe earned the Ph. D. in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Republican Vision of John Tyler(2003) and At Home with Illinois Governors: A Social History of the Illinois Executive Mansion (2002).

Mitchell Newton-Matza received an M. A. from DePaul University and the Ph. D. from the Catholic University of America. He has published numerous journal and encyclopedia articles, the majority of which center on legal and/or labor history. He is currently an adjunct teacher at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, where he has also taught full-time. He has taught at other schools including DePaul University, Roosevelt University, and Moraine Community College. He is currently revising for publication his dissertation on the relationship between Illinois labor and law/politics and serves on the advisory board of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Shirley J. Portwood is a professor in the Department of Historical Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Portwood specializes in African American history and the history of American women. She has published articles about African Americans in Illinois history and in Victorian America, on African American family history, on the Alton School Case, and other topics. Portwood has published a book on her family history, Tell Us A Story: An African American Family in the Heartland (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000).

Erika Schlichter teaches United States history and government at Sycamore High School in Sycamore, Illinois. She earned a B.A. in history and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Northern Illinois University. She is currently pursuing a second master's degree in education administration. Her research interests include modern civil rights and women's history.

Walter S. Waggoner received a bachelor's and master's degree from Illinois State University where he was a graduate assistant in United States History and Sociology. He taught history and government for thirty years at Quincy High School. He is the author of Copperheads, Black Republicans and Bushwackers: Pike County, Illinois and the Civil War. He also co-authored "Sick, Sore and Sorry: The Stones Prairie Riot of 1860" in the Journal of Illinois History (Spring 2002). He is writing a biography of Civil War general Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss.


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