Independent Historian

John V. Quarstein is an award-winning historian, preservationist, and author. He is director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia. The author of 17 books, his titles include Hilton Village: America’s First Public Planned Community; A History of Ironclads: The Power of Iron over Wood; CSS Virginia: Sink Before Surrender, and The Monitor Boys: The Crew of the Union’s First Ironclad, winner of the 2012 Henry Adams Prize for excellence in historical literature. Quarstein has also produced, narrated and written several PBS documentaries including the film series Civil War in Hampton Roads, a Silver Telly Award winner.

Quarstein is the recipient of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s President’s Award for Historic Preservation, the Civil War Society’s Preservation Award, and the Daughters of the American Revolution Gold Historians Medal.

Quarstein lives in the National Register of Historic Places property known as the 1757 Herbert House. This outstanding example of brick Georgian architecture is located near Blackbeard’s Point on the Hampton River in Hampton, Virginia.

John Brown (AKA ‘Fed’ and ‘Benford’) (1818-1876)

John Brown (also known as “Fed” and “Benford”) of Southampton County, Virginia is best remembered as an escaped enslaved person who wrote an account of his bondage that was published in England in 1854. Brown was born about 1818 on the Betty Moore farm, three … Read MoreJohn Brown (AKA ‘Fed’ and ‘Benford’) (1818-1876)