Tonya McQuade

Tonya McQuade is an author, educator, speaker, and retired high school English Teacher. She is a great lover of history, travel, and nature, frequently visiting museums, state and national parks, and historical sites with her husband, as well as reading many historical texts and primary source documents. In many cases, her reading of historical fiction has driven her to dig more deeply into the historical figures and events being portrayed, leading her to new discoveries and areas of interest.

After acquiring 50 family Civil War letters, Tonya began researching the American Civil War in Missouri, blogging about her writing journey, and writing articles for the Emerging Civil War website. Her book A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri (2024) incorporates those letters with historical commentary and is available on Amazon. She is especially interested in the role women played in the Civil War, the history of slavery and abolition, the history of John and Jessie Frémont, and the ways the Civil War has been depicted in literature, film, poetry, and song.

Though not Civil War-related, Tonya recently completed another book related to family history: Frank and Nora’s Historic Honeymoon Adventure: A Travelogue with a “Time Travel” Twist. “Nora” is Nora Petree Traughber – Tonya’s great grandmother and the granddaughter of James. C. Hale. “Frank” is Dr. William Francis Traughber, also from Missouri, though his family fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War (they lived in Centralia, Missouri, and come up in her first two blog posts for ECW). This book, which describes Frank and Nora’s amazing four week, 4,500+ mile honeymoon trek in 1905 and shares many photos and stories from their scrapbook, is also available on Amazon.

Tonya is currently a member of South Bay Civil War Round Table, South Bay Writers, Poetry Center San Jose, and the National League of American Pen Women. She earned B.A. degrees in English and Communication Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she served as a writer and editor for the student newspaper, the Daily Nexus, for four years. She also earned her Single Subject Teaching Credential in English at UCSB and later her M.A. in Educational Leadership from San Jose State University.

You can learn more about Tonya on her website at tonyagrahammcquade.com, as well as find photos related to her book and to her research trips to Missouri. Her website also includes links to her Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots blog posts, her poetry and photography, and her social media sites. A full listing of Tonya’s ECW articles can be found here.

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Tonya is also a member of the Emerging Civil War Speakers Bureau. Her available presentations are listed below:

How John Brown’s wife Mary ended up living in California and buried at Madronia Cemetery in Saratoga
What’s a wife to do after her husband is hanged for treason? Much has been written about the abolitionist work of John Brown, the part he played in the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars, and his disastrous raid on Harpers Ferry. His prophetic dying words anticipated the bloodshed of the Civil War, and his hanging outside of Charles Town, Virginia, and later burial in North Elba, New York, sparked big headlines and drew large crowds. Far less has been written about John Brown’s wife, Mary, and how she and his surviving children fared in the years after his death. How many know, for example, that she and several of her children moved to California in 1864 and eventually settled in Saratoga on the western edge of Santa Clara County? It was in Saratoga that she lived the final years of her life and now lies buried with sixteen other family members at Madronia Cemetery, thousands of miles from where her husband’s body “lies a-mouldering” in North Elba, New York. Learn more about Mary Brown’s later life and discover her California connections and her family’s West Coast legacy.

When Family History Research Leads to a Box of Civil War Letters and Writing a Book
Hear the story of how my new book, A State Divided: The Civil War Letters of James Calaway Hale and Benjamin Petree of Andrew County, Missouri came to be. It’s the story of what happens when someone contacts you on Ancestry.com, offering you a box of old family letters rescued from a garbage heap, and suddenly your life trajectory changes. Suddenly, you’re tracing your great-great-great grandfather’s steps throughout three years of the Civil War; researching key people, events, and impacts of the Civil War in Missouri; and discovering why Missouri was such a divided state. Included among the letters was a flag Hale’s daughter Mary Ann made for him, which he carried with him throughout the Civil War and which appears on the cover of the book. Learn more about Hale’s experience in the 33rd Missouri Volunteer Infantry, as well as in the Invalid (aka. Veterans Reserve) Corps; find out about Benjamin Petree’s experience marching with Sherman in the Carolinas Campaign, then later in the Grand Procession of the Union Army in Washington D.C.; and hear more about how this book (and the Ancestry.com connection) came together.

Did the Civil War Really Begin in Missouri?
Missouri was a state torn apart by political disagreements and violence long before the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. While the Missouri Compromise of 1820 helped to postpone the Civil War for four decades, the Platte Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott case, and the “Bleeding Kansas” border wars – all of which played out here – added fuel to the fire. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 ignited the flames further since Missouri was a state truly caught in the middle – bordered by four slave states and four free. Some of the war’s first blood spilled on its soil when Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon fell at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Soon, the state even found itself with two competing governments: one supporting the Union; the other, the Confederacy. Learn more about these events, and discover why many believe the Civil War truly started in Missouri.

The Battle of Centralia – a “Carnival of Blood”
On September 27, 1864, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson and his band of guerillas wreaked havoc on the small town of Centralia in Boone County, Missouri. That morning, Anderson and 80 of his men rode into Centralia, looted local businesses, drank large amounts of whiskey, and robbed a stagecoach. That afternoon, they blocked the approaching North Missouri railroad, swarmed the train, robbed the passengers, brutally killed and mutilated 22 soldiers and one civilian, set the train and train depot on fire, sent the burning train down the tracks, and took Union Sergeant Thomas Goodman prisoner. By the end of the day, Anderson’s guerillas killed 123 of the 125 troops in the 39th Missouri Volunteer Infantry who came looking for them. The Battle of Centralia saw the highest percentage of men killed in a single engagement of the Civil War, and Anderson’s men became notorious for the torture and mutilations they inflicted. Goodman, who managed to escape ten days later, called the scene a drunken “carnival of blood.” Union Major Andrew Vern Emen Johnston was killed by a 17-year-old ruffian named Jesse James, who reportedly bragged about the killing later. Learn more about the events of both the Centralia Massacre and the Battle of Centralia, and find out how I discovered that two branches of my family have connections to these events – but were on different sides in the war.

The Role of the Invalid Corps (aka. Veterans Reserve Corps) in the Civil War
The Invalid Corps was created in April 1863 “to make suitable use in a military or semi-military capacity of soldiers who had been rendered unfit for active field service on account of wounds or disease contracted in line of duty, but who were still fit for garrison or other light duty, and were, in the opinion of their commanding officers, meritorious and deserving.” By the end of the war, more than 60,000 men served in this Corps, in more than twenty-four regiments of troops. The Corps was part of a larger effort to address the Union’s difficulties in filling the ranks of its enormous armies. Corps members included men who had lost limbs or eyes, suffered from rheumatism or epilepsy, were experiencing other chronic illnesses or diseases, or were traumatized by what we now call PTSD. Learn more about how these soldiers continued to serve their country in states throughout the Union, hear excerpts from my own 3rd great grandfather’s letters where he describes his experiences in the Corps, find out why they eventually changed the name to the Veterans Reserve Corps, and discover how they played an important role in defending President Abraham Lincoln in July 1864.