George W. Boudreau

George Boudreau began a love affair with American history at age eleven. Sitting on the floor of his grandparents' home in Michigan City, Indiana, he watched his father and grandfather tear up during a program about the death of FDR. He'd never seen either of them cry before that. The next day, he marched into his school library, to find out who this person was and why he'd meant so much to his family. The rest, as they say, is history.

As the years passed, that fascination has grown, particularly looking at America's founding era, his favorite founding father Benjamin Franklin, and the stuff that history has left behind, ranging from small objects to large buildings.

Since 1994, he's lived in America's founding city, Philadelphia, turning a childhood fascination into a life and career. He's held fellowships at the Library Company of Philadelphia and American Philosophical Society (both founded by Franklin), the David Library of the American Revolution, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, as well as been a postdoctoral research fellow at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and the Winterthur Museum in Delaware.