Abby Epplett, Historian

Back in November, I watched and reviewed the documentary The American Revolution , which debuted on PBS and was produced by Florentine Films co-founded by Ken Burns . Having watched many of Burns’ documentaries and made short films of my own, I decided my next long video commitment was the 4 hour and 56 minute course Ken Burns Teaches Documentary Filmmaking on MasterClass . I have seen over a third of the MasterClass catalog so far, but I leave written reviews for those with a distinctly historical theme, including Doris Kearns Goodwin Teaches U.S. Presidential History and Leadership , Tracing Your Roots through Food with Michael W. Twitty , and Black History, Black Freedom, & Black Love . Like the other MasterClasses, this course was of high quality and gave advice offered nowhere else. Throughout the course, Burns walked the viewer through the steps of creating a documentary: finding and telling a story, sourcing archival materials, writing a script, using cinematic tech...

During my first day of my adventure in the Windsor, CT area, I stopped by East Windsor Historical Society to look at their collection of buildings and related outdoor artifacts. This venue was not far away from the Connecticut Trolley Museum , which I had visited in the morning, and was a great companion visit. While the society was not open during my visit, it was easy to park and look at the well-preserved space, also known as Museums on the Green. (Falmouth Historical Society on Cape Cod, which I visited back in August 2024 , similarly calls its venue Museum on the Green.)

While talking with his friends at the Green Dragon , Sam mentioned his cousin Halfast Gamgee had seen a giant tree walking through the North Moors of the Northfarthing while serving his master, Mr. Boffin, who was out hunting. This brief aside, and the exchange that followed, gives the reader an enormous amount of information about hunting practices, social hierarchy, and folk belief in the Shire, which I will unpack in this essay.

In mid-August 2025, I took a three-day trip to the Windsor, CT area to explore many museums and parks. My first stop on the trip with the Connecticut Trolley Museum (CTM) in East Windsor. The owner of the museum, the Connecticut Electric Railway Association, Inc., was founded in 1940, making it the oldest trolley preservation organization in the country. While checking off a bucket list item, I saw trolleys and fire trucks, took a ride on a restored trolley, and visited the unique gift shop.

I recently read the eBook Witch Hunt: A Traveler’s Guide to the Power and Persecution of the Witch written by Kristen J. Sollée and published in 2020 by Red Wheel / Weiser . The book was based on Sollée’s road trip to places of importance in witchcraft history with each chapter covering a different location with Europe or the USA. Sollée seamlessly blends her lived experience with detailed research, creating a narrative of magical realism, historic documentation, and modern interpretation, from scholarly books to tourist traps. Besides exploring places less familiar to the average reader, Sollée includes references to literature turned pop culture like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and well-known artworks like Michelangelo’s David and The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden in the Sistine Chapel. The balance of novelty and familiarity kept me engaged through the 2.5 hour reading time. Another talent exhibit by Sollée is her ability to explain new vocabulary. From the “Introductio...

On the same day I took the lighthouse cruise around Cape Ann , I walked around Gloucester to see public art and learn the history of the maritime town. Along the way, I found carillon bells, a historic boat, beached buoys, and a silly sign.

Today, I am using my creative liberties to share a scene not appearing in the book that establishes the musical motif representing Frodo and Sam together. In my introduction to this theme, I combine the sound of the serinette with the whistling loved by hobbits along with exploring one interpretation of their relationship: that of a master and his disciple or acolyte.

The only thing better than a boat tour is two boat tours! In early August, not long after my trip around Portsmouth Harbor, I saw six beautiful lighthouse and reviewed the history of Essex County, MA on a two-and-a-half hour ride given by the family-run company Harbor Tours Inc. of Cape Anne . This tour had everything: fishing vessels, draw bridges, islands, and a boat named King Eider after a large sea duck. Tickets are $45 for adults, $42 for Seniors, $20 for children, and $0 for children 2 and under. While this is on the upper end of my spending, the trip was well worth the price.

Today I am reviewing The Guinness Book of Records 1492: The World Five Hundred Years Ago , a book I purchased at the Book Barn in Niantic, CT back in 2024. Almost exactly a year ago, I reviewed A Pictorial History of Costume by Wolfgang Bruhn and Max Tilke , which I purchased on the trip. The two books are similar in that they provide fun facts about world history broken into easily readable sections with plenty of pictures. Much like the modern Guinness Book of Records , Guinness Publishing produced the book back in 1992 for the anniversary of Christopher Columbus and his crew arriving in the Caribbean. Unlike the modern record book, where records do not rely on the judgement of trained GRW employees but on primary resources from the time period with varying levels of accuracy. Deborah Manley , a co-founder of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) and a prolific author, was editor of the book, while Dr. Geoffrey Scammell, a history profess...

I go to Portsmouth, NH so often that this is my fifth installment of quick history stops. The city is highly walkable with wide sidewalks, crosswalks with traffic lights, and streets lights. On this trip, I went back to the public gardens at Prescott Park, learned about historic buildings, took a rest on Four Tree Island, and even saw a very large boat pass under Memorial Bridge.

I return from my winter holiday break with new music, aptly named “The Adventure Song”. This piece covers the first few pages of “Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past” as Frodo spends seventeen years at Bag End hosting parties with his twenty closest friends, visiting Elves and Dwarves in the woods, and not aging. As much as Frodo seemed to enjoy his life, he was curious about the land beyond its borders that his ‘uncle’ Bilbo had described in his stories. This essay details other adventure songs found in modern Western musicals that I used as a reference while composing this piece, along with a quick note about how I am voicing the Elves, and an explanation of the song’s structure.

Few things give me such delight as a historic harbor tour. During my annual trip to Portsmouth, NH in 2025, I took the Portsmouth Harbor Cruise offered by aptly named Portsmouth Harbor Cruises . This eighty-five minute tour covers four hundred years of Portsmouth history in a well-researched and approachable format. The perfect weather made the trip a delightful experience.

Since starting the blog in May 2022, I have methodically visited historic houses, museums, parks, and quick history stops throughout New England, marching steadily toward the unattainable goal of “Seeing Everything”. Warner House was the only historic house open for public tours that I had not visited during my annual pilgrimage to Portsmouth. The building has even been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1966 . While I have no more properties to explore, I plan to return for boat tours, along with traveling farther north to Kittery, in the coming year.

Happy New Year, and welcome back to my blog after my winter holiday break! In July 2025, I took a daytrip to the Greater Portsmouth area and visited many history-themed attractions, including botanical gardens, a historic house, a boat tour, and quick history stops. The first post in the four-part series focuses on Fuller Gardens located in North Hampton, NH. This had been on my list of places to visit for several years, but the stop had eluded me. I was glad to have the opportunity to visit at last.

This is my last blog post of 2025! I will discuss two aspects of folklore that appear during “Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past” related to the seventeen years Frodo spent living alone at Bag End. During this time, he took many trips through the woods of the Shire and was rumored to speak with people from other lands, refugees fleeing danger in the South. Folk cultures around the world have long been fascinated by or afraid of forests. The hobbits’ fears of who might lurk in the woods aligned with fears of Ancient and Medieval people in the Real World. Meanwhile, human migration and displacement due to natural or man-made disasters have existed for thousands of years but have been studied only for the past few decades. During this essay, I will describe both of these concepts and point out similarities between them: our natural unease over the unfamiliar.

Back in July, I visited Washington, DC. This is the fourth installment to my miniseries on the National Museum of American History , and the final post about my adventure in the capital. I will be taking a two week break during the holiday season but will be back in the New Year with more history-themed posts. Quickly reviewing my in-depth tour of the museum, I covered second floor of the museum plus “Entertainment Nation” in Part 1 ; “First Ladies”, “American Presidency”, and “The Price of Freedom” in Part 2 ; and “Food” and “American on the Move” in Part 3 . For this last part, I will visit “Lighting A Revolution & Power Machinery”, “Change Your Game”, “American Enterprise”, and “The Value of Money”.

I return once again to the National Museum of American History , which I visited back in July during my adventure in Washington, DC. This is part three of a four part series. The first part covered the second floor of the museum plus “Entertainment Nation”. The second part covered “First Ladies”, “American Presidency”, and “The Price of Freedom”. This third part will cover “Food” and “American on the Move”, both located on the first floor.

During my trip to Washington, DC back in July, my final stop was the National Museum of American History (NMAH) . This series looks to be four parts long and will finish up this week. The first part covered “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Within These Walls”, “Many Voices, One Nation”, “American Democracy”, a temporary exhibit about Latina reporters, and “Entertainment Nation”. This next part will include “The First Ladies”, “The American Presidency”, and “The Price of Freedom”, all located on the third floor.

My final stop on my trip to Washington, DC was the National Museum of American History (NMAH) , part of the Smithsonian. I had visited the museum as a child about twenty years earlier and remembered the thrill of seeing famous artifacts throughout American culture. However, my memory did not prepare me for the 7-hour, 700-photo adventure that was my experience at NMAH. From the Star-Spangled Banner to presidential china to more cars and trains than I could have ever imagined, my final posts of this year (number of parts to be determined) will feature the wonders of this extraordinary museum.

In previous case studies, I have combined information from the text of The Lord of the Rings with historical documentation to explore character behavior through a modern medical lens. These descriptions cannot be considered true diagnoses, as I am not a licensed psychiatrist, the characters are fictional, and the terminology that I use did not exist when the books were written. However, I hope that explaining these conditions will provoke empathy for people in the Real World who live with similar circumstances. While I will briefly cover the plausibility of two conditions that I have seen mentioned by other Tolkien enthusiasts on social media, I will spend most of the essay explaining my own interpretation.