Elizabeth Leonard '75      Biography

Elizabeth D. Leonard was born in New York, but spent much of her youth abroad, first in the Netherlands and then in Japan, where she graduated from the ASIJ in 1975. She received her B. A. from the College of New Rochelle in New York, and her M. A. and Ph. D. (both in American history) from the University of California, Riverside, in 1992. Since finishing her doctorate Dr. Leonard has been at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she is now an associate professor and the proud recipient of a permanent Wiswell Research Fellowship, which helps to underwrite her scholarly work. She is also the mother of two wonderful sons, Anthony  and Joseph , whose accomplishments thus far in their young lives far outshine her own.  Dr. Leonard has just finished a book on the subject of the federal government's response to the Lincoln assassination conspiracy: Lincoln's Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War  (WW Norton & Co., Inc., 2004).   Dr. Leonard still plays the guitar and sings, but not as often or as well as she did when she was in high school.

Areas of Expertise: 19th-century U.S. history, especially women's history; women in the Civil War, women's history and women's culture in colonial Latin America.