About the Author

The Rev. R. John Brockmann TSSF has been a professed member of the Third Order Society of St. Francis, Province of the Americas for 24 years and has just stepped down as the Minister Provincial. He has been the editor of the Province's Franciscan Times for over two decades, and is currently the Province's archivist and online librarian. Brockmann is also a retired professor from the University of Delaware and four of his most recent books have focused on 19-century history in the US: From Millwrights to Shipwrights to the Twenty-First Century (1998); Exploding Steamboats, Senate Debates, and Technical Reports: The Convergence of Technology, Politics, and Rhetoric in the Steamboat Bill of 1838 (2002); Twisted Rails, Sunken Ships: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Steamboat and Railroad Accident Investigation Reports, 1833-1879 (2002); and Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795-1866: Protean Man for a Protean Nation (2009). Brockmann is the rector of an Episcopal parish in the Boston area, and a trained spiritual director.