John McClenahenResearcher, 2009–Present

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John McClenahen has investigated such signal nineteenth-century technologies as the telephone and the telegraph as well as researching William’s business acquaintances and partners.

McClenahen has written in detail about key persons mentioned in William’s diary such as Nahum Stetson, Steinway & Sons’ formidable sales manager. He explored William’s partners in the transportation business such as Gottlieb Daimler and Frederick Kübler of the Daimler Motor Company. William licensed motor patents from Daimler, the German inventor and industrialist, and took rides in his new motor boats.

A native of Ohio and resident of Virginia since 1967, McClenahen is a one-time broadcast journalist and an award-winning business journalist for nearly 40 years.  McClenahen received bachelors and masters degrees in English from St. Lawrence University and Western Reserve University, respectively. He received a MA in liberal studies from Georgetown University, where he also has pursued doctoral studies.  He has served on the Editorial Review Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was the founding editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. His essays on aesthetics and nineteenth-century American cultural history have been published in the same publication.  McClenahen’s first book, Eight Mile: Selected Poems, was published in 2008. Not Only Explorers, a second volume of poems, was published in 2009. Images of the American Southwest, a collection of photographs, also was published in 2009.