Jonathan R. Allen is an Ohioan who lives in the Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina where he spends creative time reading, learning, researching, writing, and publishing content about the Civil War. He wants to help people learn Civil War history.
501 Civil War Quotes and Notes eBook & Paperback:
1. How and when did you get hooked on history?
For me, it began early in life. History is in my roots.
I am an Ohioan who now lives in North Carolina, my family heritage is in Northeast Ohio, the Akron area. My grandfather Carl Cranz was an Ohio State University graduate with a degree in Agriculture. Among other jobs, he worked for many years as a tenant farmer for the Jonathan Hale Farm in Bath, Ohio. Hale was an early settler of the Connecticut Western Reserve, a raw wilderness at the time, in the northeast part of what would become the state of Ohio. Hale settled in the Cuyahoga River Valley in 1810. Over time, Hale built a three-story brick house in the Cuyahoga River Valley and three generations of Hales farmed the land and lived in the brick house. Hale's sprawling farm benefited from its location near the rich flood plain of the Cuyahoga River. The Hale Farm and Village exists today as a historic site run by the Western Reserve Historical Society. It is located in Bath Township and is within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. My grandfather worked for C.O. Hale, a descendant of Jonathan Hale.
As a child I lived near the Hale Farm and Village, a historic property devoted to telling what life was like in the Cuyahoga River Valley in the early years of the Western Reserve and Ohio. My grandfather Cranz was a docent in the big red barn museum of the Hale Farm and Village. The museum displays farm tools of the 19th century. My grandfather knew about all the tools and various farm implements, he was a modern farmer but had used some 19th century tools himself. As his grandson, I had free access to the red barn museum and would listen to my grandfather explain to paying visitors how the farm tools and implements were used. As a young boy, I found it fascinating. The Hale, Hammond, and Cranz families had close ties in the early years of Bath Township. The Ira Cemetery has been called the Cranz-Hale-Hammond Cemetery and it can be found near the Hale Farm and Village. My grandfather Cranz and other forebears are buried there. I guess that early in my life I was sort of growing up in both the 19th and 20th centuries at the same time.
I should mention too, that Native Americans had a strong presence in, and predated the Western Reserve. I have a metal box full of arrowheads that my grandfather Cranz found as he worked the soil. Native American mounds and old camps, and the remains of the Erie Canal, were all part of the Cuyahoga River Valley. As a Boy Scout, I hiked to these sites and sometimes camped nearby them. Nearby Bath is Hudson, Ohio. Hudson was part of the Western Reserve and it was settled by David Hudson, preceding and coinciding with Jonathan Hale's time. Hudson was an abolitionist town, the Underground Railroad ran through it, and John Brown's family moved to Hudson when he was a young man. History was all around me when I was a young boy. It caught my attention then, and continues to now.
2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?
I think it plays an important role. I like to learn about the history of the Civil War and life in the 19th century. Besides my Hale Farm experiences as a boy, my family also visited Gettysburg, the two seemed to mesh together in my head. Same time period but two very different settings and stories. Bloody war vs. peaceful farming, quite a contrast. I understood the basics of the Battle of Gettysburg, but it was a huge topic for me to absorb as a seven-year-old. I'd caught the Civil War bug. I still have the book my Dad bought for me at the Gettysburg gift shop. Its title is, "GETTYSBURG" by MacKinlay Kantor. HA! That fact ought to date me. My late father, Richard F. Allen, and I toured Civil War battlefields together when I was an adult and we had a ton of fun. He always encouraged me with my Civil War endeavours. I owe him everything.
I blog, Tweet, and self-publish books about the Civil War. As a boy, I recall having a desk in the basement of my home. I had notebooks and pencils and sat and began writing about what I saw and learned at the Hale Farm. I have no idea what I wrote, I was just a kid messing around, but I enjoyed it. We moved and a new life began for me, my writing desk went away. Now, decades later I'm back at a desk with a computer and writing again. I still have notebooks and pencils next to me. What goes around comes around.
3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?
In my various jobs and work I'm afraid history played no part in my life. I have a couple of Business degrees from the University of Akron and my career efforts were in business. I was not a teacher, but I've often wished that I had been. Teaching students about the Civil War would have made me happy. I suppose that's what I'm doing now with my Civil War content creation. I'm attempting to help people learn about the Civil War.
4. Why is studying/knowing history important?
I'll go with a common explanation. We need to learn from history, so we don't repeat mistakes and also to repeat the things we did well. I know that's a simple answer, but I think it's true and has value. Beyond that, I think that for me it involves personal satisfaction and enjoyment. Maybe learning about history helps me to subconsciously make decisions in life. Maybe too, that's going a tad too deep.
5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
The Civil War and the 19th century. I want to know enough about those times so I can feel like I lived then. That I knew Jonathan Hale, that I helped to settle an area, that I farmed like my grandfather Cranz did, or that I was on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, taking aim at those men in gray coming toward me (Yup, I'd have been an Ohio Yankee in Mr. Lincoln's Army.). The more you learn the better your imagination will be when you daydream about living in another time. I geek out on that.
6. How did you come to start the Learn Civil War History site and blog?
I started it all just for fun on a free blogspot account, a long time ago. My whole idea was to share what I learned about the Civil War, I don't claim to be an expert. I was only doing it as a hobby, as an amusement. Then, I was surprised to find that people were visiting my blog and reading my posts. More people were coming to my blog than I ever imagined. I've been a website developer and I became a WordPress developer, so I migrated the blogspot blog over to my own WordPress self-hosted blog. It's name is: LearnCivilWarHistory.com.
Plus, I instinctively knew that blogging and writing about the Civil War was the path to great fame and fortune, that it's where the big bucks are. Uh huh. Cough-cough-cough. It's all a labor of love for me.
7. What can viewers expect to find on your website and what does the future hold for your website?
I am now completing my second self-published book about the Civil War. It has 125 Civil War stories/facts and will be on Amazon ASAP as a Kindle eBook and a paperback. I love the freedom of self-publishing books, blog posts, and Tweets. Each one of those 125 stories/facts in my new book is a topic that I can expand on for a blog post and for many Tweets. This book will give me a head-start on blog posts and Tweets. I will also blog and Tweet about anything about the Civil War that happens to catch my attention and curiosity, that's been my main strategy all along with my Civil War content. I have more self-published books planned. Abolitionist John Brown is probably the subject of my next book, unless I change my mind! I would also like to begin a podcast, but that's on a back-burner for now.
I read-learn-research, then write, and then publish. That's the formula I follow and will continue to do so as long as God wants me to.
Bravo! Bravo!
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