Author Barbara Gregorich to Speak at Annual Dinner October 18

The North Berrien Historical Society will hold its Annual Dinner on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at the North Berrien Historical Museum. Dinner will be served at 6pm with a business meeting at 7pm. Following Society business, guest speaker Barbara Gregorich will speak on "The Hunt for Maud Nelson" at 7:30pm.

Barbara Gregorich

Chicago-based author Barbara Gregorich specializes in children’s books, but a lifelong passion for baseball has also influenced her work.  In the early 1990s she began to intensively document the lives of early female baseball players, including Maud Nelson. Her research resulted in the 1993 book Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball. Gregorich has said of this work: “...uncovering the story took four full years — years in which my eyes blurred from reading microfilm, my car’s tires grew smooth from hauling me to libraries around the country, and my fingers frayed from dialing strangers… Despite everything, it was the most thrilling research experience I’ve ever had.”  As our featured guest, Gregorich will present “The Hunt for Maud Nelson,” a summary of her research and publication efforts.  Thanks to Gregorich’s work, the North Berrien Historical Society was able to produce our recent exhibit Women in Baseball, telling the story of Maud Nelson, her barnstorming Western Bloomer Girls, and her life in Watervliet a century ago.

Women at Play (1993)

Tickets for the Annual Dinner are $15 per person and reservations are required. Barbara Gregorich's talk is free and open to the public after dinner. For more information please call the North Berrien Historical Museum at 269-468-3330.