Rebecca Barbour
Calcutt has devoted a great deal of her time and energy to the study of American
history. In pursuit of history, she moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and
became a licensed tour guide for both the city of Charleston and Middleton Place
Plantation. Mrs. Calcutt can be found at Middleton Place Plantation giving tours
of the house and gardens.
In following her
keen interest in American history, Mrs. Calcutt has completed extensive studies
in colonial and Revolutionary-era history. She has a bachelor of arts, with
honors in history, from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in
antebellum southern history from the University of Charleston. She has served as
a docent for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History
and has also given tours of Washington, D.C., Arlington Cemetery, and Mount
Vernon.
As a result of
being unable to find an “adequate guidebook” on South Carolina's battlefields,
and since Mrs. Calcutt believes that “history is best learned in a ‘hands-on’
environment,” she decided to write her own easy-to-use tour guide for South
Carolina, the state that saw the most battles during the Revolutionary War.
South Carolina's Revolutionary War Battlefields: A Tour Guide is her realization of a battlefield tour guide specifically designed for
South Carolina. Mrs. Calcutt chose to include each battle site based on three
criteria: accessibility, something to see, and an interesting story. Her book is
compact enough to fit in a glove compartment and lightweight enough for the
reader to carry around the battlefield.
Richmond's Wartime
Hospitals
also covers military history, but from behind the front lines of battle. While
medical science enjoyed several advances during the Civil War, the doctors and
hospitals in the southern states
faced overwhelming casualties with few supplies and inadequate personnel. By
focusing on facilities in Virginia's capitol, Mrs. Calcutt, who is also a
registered nurse, illustrates how exhausted resources rapidly defeated southern
doctors' heroic efforts. |