About

Jonathan W. Wanzer, M.A.

I have always been interested in history, not just what happened, but the circumstances around events, the myriad of details that lead up to an event, how everything interrelates and reacts. So, it is little surprise that I would find myself under the tutelage of my maternal grandmother, Wanieta “Nita” Ruth SULLIVAN Wanzer (1916-2004), a lifelong teacher and librarian by trade, a renegade genealogist by avocation.

In 1978 a Sullivan family reunion was taking place in Kansas. My mother was relocating us to another part of town and jumped on the opportunity to send me on a 2-month genealogical adventure with my grandmother while she packed and moved us. It was on this trip that I first experienced history as we traveled from the San Francisco Bay Area through the Southwest, up into the middle states, crossing the Mississippi River in Hannibal Missouri, and returning through Colorado and Utah on the way home to San Jose, California.

Many of our stops were tourist traps built around historic locations or well-known people, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s house, Roy Rogers Ranch, Samuel Clements’s house, and the Alamo to name a few, all of course having a museum of some sort and gift shops. We steered away from the souvenirs for the most part, though I did buy several of the Little House books while we were at the Wilder house to read on the long driving periods between stops. These sites were physical connections to the history they represented, something tangible, being in the place, among the objects that belonged to these storied individuals and events. What came later in Moran, Kansas where my grandmother grew up, was deeper still, a visceral link, not just to the historical past, no, this was to my historical past, places my family lived, and in a few cases still did.

There is a reason we have physical senses, they all make strong mental connections between the facts and emotions of our experiences. They are key factors in establishing memories, memory retention, and in recovering memories of things we thought we had forgotten. The olfactory sense in particular can evoke strong emotional reactions and bring long-forgotten memories to the surface. The smells common to old books and documents affect me deeply. You can tell a lot about the environment a book has come from just by its smell, and yes, I do like most smells that accompany old books. Every old or used book I add to my library gets a sniff test as well as a thorough structural examination. Old books are just one thing I have a strong sense-memory attachment to.

Wanieta Ruth SULLIVAN Wanzer
Moran, Kansas c. 1918

The farmhouse my grandmother was born in had long since been torn down, decades before I was there, the one-room schoolhouse she attended first through eighth grades, however, was still there. The school was no longer in use of course, but it was still standing, one of the few 19th century prairie schools still standing in Kansas at the time. As a fan of the Little House on the Prairie TV show and books I had foreknowledge of the one-room schoolhouse as a practice of the time, and Nita often told me that she was reminded of her school when we watched the TV series, but it never made a real impression on me until we were standing on the steps of her one-room schoolhouse, the full sensory experience made it that that much more real to me. The smells of the surrounding farmland, the feel of the wood of the steps and doors, the slight dampness from rain the day before. From that day on I had a better understanding of her connection to the place and experience. The combination of these sents can take me back to that little one-room schoolhouse on the Kansas prairie. I understand her context that much better having been in those places.

Life took over as it tends to, and my draw to history was relegated to the recesses of a busy mind until my grandmother dove even deeper into genealogical research, predominantly for the Sullivan side of the family. I occasionally went with her to a local genealogical research library and helped when I could. She eventually put her research together producing a photocopied manuscript, sending 200 copies to family members who requested one. When Nieta passed in 2004 my mother, Gini, took the mantle of family historian and genealogist. When mom passed unexpectedly on December 23, 2007, the mantle was passed on to me.

Over the years I have had a few opportunities to dig in for a couple of weeks and make some progress, particularly on the Wanzer side. My great-grandfather’s mother, Malvina “Vina” Abigail CHASE Wanzer had passed down a family bible through my paternal great-grandmother. In this Chase family Bible, there were some undiscovered documents, at least undiscovered by my mother, that would spark my interest in genealogy again.

In 2012 I was going through filing cabinets full of Nieta’s notes and came across the Bible. Inside was an envelope addressed to Gigi, the aforementioned great-grandmother, who I had met two or three times as a small child, in the envelope were 5 letters from her father-in-law, Andrew “Jack” Jackson Wanzer, to her mother-in-law Vina, while he was serving in the Union Army’s, Wisconsin 5th Infantry Regiment, during the Civil War.

Many people have family letters from the Civil War, some have correspondence from the Revolutionary War, and a few have even earlier colonial dispatches and letters, but this was one of those inspiring moments in my personal history journey. There were additional documents in the bible, a pastoral reference for Vina and her mother, Abagail MASON Chase, and several sheets removed from another family bible with births, deaths, and marriages recorded, Vina’s being the latest entry.

This discovery reinvigorated my interest in history, archival preservation, paper conservation, and restoration, the bible is in poor condition with a significant amount of leather dry rot. It is a common style c. 1877 family bible frequently found here in the U.S. I ordered some preservation materials to consolidate and stabilize the cover before it crumbles away to nothing. Unfortunately, the cover is badly damaged from a century of abuse. Replacement covers are available in the same style indicating the common nature of this volume. The text block and spine are in fair to good condition. This brings me to my areas of interest, while I am certainly interested in research, and archives as well as in field work, I also have a good deal of interest in the preservation and restoration of books and documents, graphology, paleography, and in collection curation and presentation, i.e. public history. As a maker and costumer, fun hobbies in their own right, I am also interested in producing museum-quality replicas and supporting living history.

In 2004, when my grandmother passed, I was finishing flight school and working on my commercial pilot and instructor certificates. I had become interested in warbirds and vintage aircraft in flight school, and enrolled in an Airframe & Powerplant program in hopes of working on these old aircraft, preserving them for future generations, graduating with an AS in Aviation Maintenance Technologies, three academic certificates, and an A&P Mechanic certificates from the FAA. I was on track for work in aviation education, teaching one semester of Airframe at my alma mater. Opportunities in the aviation industry for someone just starting are inevitably tied to a few required commitments, long hours, travel, and relocation, none of which were in the cards for me. I plan to get back to flying and building experimental aircraft at some point, for now, aviation is an interest on the back burner.

A few odd twists of timing and opportunity, a move to Oregon, and I was back in school working on a Bachelor of Science in Religion. Philosophy, theology, and early church history have been topics of interest for many years. I started the degree in 2018 and completed it in December 2020. At the time I had notions of working on a Master’s in Divinity with a concentration in church history. I enjoyed working on that degree, but it became clear that the theological path was not the path I needed to be on. It was also clear that I was going on to a different master’s program, history.

Some threads have flown through my journey since the day Nita and I headed out on our adventure to the family reunion in Kansas, teaching, history, research, and hands-on bench skills in the field, in the lab, and the workshop. Threads is an appropriate term for my many interests, weaving in and out, changing colors and direction, weft of experiences waving through the warp of time, seemingly unconnected shiny objects, distractions from a linear path. This is not, however, the case. Most of my unrelated interests cross paths and enhance each other frequently.

I started my first graduate program in Spring 2022 completing it in December 2023 with an M.A. in History, primarily American and military history. I began a second graduate program in the spring of 2024 and will complete it in December 2024 with an M.A. in Public History. The decision to pursue a terminal degree was made a reality at the beginning of 2024. Anyone who knew me in primary or high school would fall down laughing had it been suggested that I would earn a master’s, let alone pursue a doctorate. Not that I lacked ability, no, what I lacked was focus and drive.

I had been kicking around the idea of a Ph.D. from the time I started the bachelor’s, I even planned my classes in both master’s to maximize efficiency before I was sure I would pursue the second master’s. I just wasn’t sure I would go on to the doctorate. In the spring of 2024, I decided to apply to the doctoral program and was accepted. At the earliest opportunity, I registered for my first two classes as an official doctoral student in spring 2025. In reality, my last semester in the master’s in public history is for both programs, two of the three classes are required for the doctorate and are at the doctorate level, HIST 705 and HIST 706.

With the completion of my second master’s and the start of a doctorate eminent, I am hoping to find a part-time, remote, adjunct teaching position in history while I work on the Ph.D. and portfolio projects. I would like to work on a documentary edition based on a 19th-century journal or similar handwritten manuscript.

For me, history is all about connections, to people, their lives, how they lived, what they did, how they faced hardships and overcame obstacles, and what their beliefs were, context. History is about people, places, and events yes, more importantly, it is about interpretation and context.