The Bearded Historian®

THE BEARDED HISTORIAN®

History is more than names and dates. It is the story of people, places, ideas, and events that shaped the world around us. Through The Bearded Historian®, I explore the stories we know, the ones we’ve forgotten, and the history hiding in plain sight.

MEET THE HISTORIAN

History has never been just a collection of names, dates, and events to me. It is the story of people, the places they lived, the choices they made, and the events that shaped the world we inherited. Sometimes the most fascinating pieces of that story are the ones that have been forgotten, overlooked, or reduced to little more than a footnote.

I’m Michael Breen, historian, author, researcher, and creator of The Bearded Historian®. I hold both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Liberty University. My historical interests span American history, with a particular passion for Colonial America, the American Revolution, the Civil War, archaeology, historic preservation, genealogy, and the overlooked stories of the past.

My interest in history has always extended beyond the pages of a textbook. I believe some of the best ways to understand the past are to visit the places where it happened, examine the records people left behind, explore historic sites and cemeteries, trace family histories, and look beyond the familiar version of a story to discover what else may be there.

As an author, I have written and published works exploring people, families, communities, and events from the past. My work combines research with storytelling because history should do more than provide information. It should help us understand the people who came before us and leave us wanting to discover more.

That passion eventually grew into The Bearded Historian®.

I created The Bearded Historian to make history accessible, engaging, and worth talking about. While famous battles, presidents, and major events have their place, history is much bigger than the stories most of us learned in school. There are forgotten communities, unusual events, local legends, remarkable individuals, archaeological discoveries, family stories, mysteries, and countless moments that deserve to be remembered.

The Bearded Historian is a place to explore those stories.

Here you’ll find historical articles, original books and short stories, videos, research, and explorations of some of the more unusual corners of our past. Some stories may be familiar. Others may leave you wondering how you had never heard about them before.

My goal isn’t simply to tell you what happened. I want to explore why it happened, who experienced it, what was left behind, and why it still matters today.

Because the past is closer than we sometimes realize.