OUR STORY: BILL, JAN, AND THE WEST
Bill and Jan are the authors of the books and the developers of the plush animals featured on our website.
Bill retired after teaching high school history and social studies in Commack, NY. He lives in the East, but his heart is in the West. His interest in the West started as a boy and continues today. His mother's ancestors had migrated to Kansas the decade after the Civil War. Bill can remember as a young boy visiting his grandparents who farmed outside of Manhattan, KS. Every year, his parents took the family on trips to visit different historic locations throughout the United States. While teaching, Bill spent most of his summers researching and traveling along the trails. He has walked, hiked, canoed, ridden, and driven over or along most of them. He has spent hours at research facilities looking for and studying old diaries, old maps, drawings, sketches, paintings, and early photographs by emigrants of trail sites. Some of his favorite well-known artists, emigrants, and photographers are Alfred J. Miller, George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Thomas Moran, J. Goldsborough Bruff, James Wilkins, George Simons, William H. Tappan, William Quesenbury, Charles Gillespie, Frederick Piercy, William H. Jackson, Charles W. Carter, Charles R. Savage, James Albert, Josiah Gregg, and Ben Wittick. He has spent the summers trying to locate the exact places where the artists, emigrants, and photographers stood. He would then photograph those same sites as they appear today. Some of the locations of these sites were previously unknown or incorrectly identified. He even helped in the excavation of an emigrant grave, and the relocation of her remains.
He and his wife Jan located and identified the gravesite of a gold rush argonaut. He has spoken, served as a consultant, appeared in trail documentaries, and written articles and books. He is a charter and life member of the Oregon-California-Trails Association, having served as education chair and member of the Board of Directors. He is presently the publication chair. He is also a life member of the Santa Fe Tail Association, a member of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, the National Pony Express Association, Western Writers of America, and many state historical associations.
Jan is a retired elementary special education teacher who taught in Locust Valley, NY, for over thirty years. She loves opera and has been active in the world of show dogs most of her life. Her father was very interested in the American Civil War, and as a young girl, her family visited many of the battle sites. After her marriage, her historical interests shifted to the West. She has been an enthusiastic traveling companion. In fact, their honeymoon trip was down the Santa Fe Trail while Bill did research for his books on the trail! Together, they wrote the books for younger children, and she used some of the parts of them with her students. She is also an active member of the Western historical and literary associations mentioned above.
