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Elizabeth DeWolfe

Elizabeth DeWolfe Profile Photo

My passion is to write the stories of ordinary women's extraordinary lives. I’ve written on the short life and lonely death of New England mill operative Berengera Caswell, and of an early nineteenth-century mother, Mary Marshall Dyer, and her desperate campaign to retrieve her children from the Shakers. I’ve written about gravestones, frogs, and 200-year-old hair.

My day job is professor of history at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. For 30 years, I’ve taught undergraduate courses in women’s history, in American culture, and on historical research and writing.

I am honored to have my books recognized with awards from the New England Historical Association, Northeast Popular Culture Association, the Communal Studies Association, ForeWord Magazine, and the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The real reward is in recovering one more life, remembering one more woman’s voice.

I make my life in southern Maine with my husband Scott, a rare book dealer, and a stray cat turned couch potato, Floyd.

July 14, 2025

Madeleine Pollard, Jane Tucker, and the Sex Scandal that Brought Down a Congressman

In August of 1893, Madeleine Pollard sued Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge of Kentucky for breach of promise, claiming that he had promised to marry her but then had married another woman. By the time of the trial, Polla...