About Us

Our Family

This is the Roth Gang. We’ve been homeschooling for fourteen years, and collecting classical children’s books for just as long. Everyone pitches in, if only to keep the house running when certain parents are otherwise occupied.

Top Row: #1 son David (trivia buff, military history buff, punmeister), holding Sybil (chases bunnies, respects cats),  father David (plays tennis, IT guy, runs business end of HH, “good cop” of parenting duo), Helena (spells and proof-reads, knits, upholds general decorum), #2 son Joey (mows lawn, plays Rome Total War, reaches things on high shelves).

Bottom Row: Angela “The Tornado” (races sled dogs in dining room, cardboard and duct tape artist,  increases entropy), holding Mandy (kills birds and rodents, terrorizes dogs), mother Teresa (teaches history, proof-reads history books, writes curriculum guides, ignores housework, “bad cop”), #3 son Isaac (cooks, daydreams, fixes go-carts, avoids conflict).

Our Helpers

Our college students help with our web-page, marketing, and special projects and we could hardly function without them.

Amanda Boik, a Media student at the University of Idaho, does just about everything from redesigning our web page, to creating helpful videos, to designing ads,  to formatting study guides, to setting up our entire social media empire.  She is Heritage History’s Media Wizard.

Hana Reichert, a Nursing student at Steubenville, has helped us out over the years in many ways including scanning and organizing pictures, creating and proof-reading the Classical libraries, and developing study materials.  She is Heritage History’s Girl Friday.

Ben Troxel, a Computer Science student at Spokane Falls Community College, is working on a project that is so top secret that not only can we not talk about it, but we can’t even acknowledge that he really exists.   He is Heritage History’s Seal Team Six.

Our Content Editor and Chief Laundress

About a century before the Age of Pericles, some one asked a very wise man, “What is a philosopher?” He replied: “At the games, some try to win glory, some buy and sell for money, and some watch what the others do. So it is in life; and philosophers are those who watch, who study nature, and search for wisdom.”

. . . when not reading history or doing laundry. . .

The main reason I have never attempted to blog before, in spite of the fact that Heritage History has been around for almost five years, is that I didn’t really want to “join the fray”. I’m an observer and armchair philosopher by nature, and I’m not certain I have much to say about most topics—within the bounds of permissible opinion—that others haven’t said better.

But there is one topic that I do know and know well, and that is Classical Children’s history. I’ve spent the last decade reading and digitizing most of the books on the Heritage History website. I know the authors, the publishers, the series, and the illustrations. If anyone wants to read about or comment upon Classical children’s books, or classical history in general, then this might be a good place to get started.

My husband Dave and I created the Heritage History website because we wanted to popularize some of these wonderful books. We also wanted to help other parents (like ourselves), who were utterly bored by twelve years of “social studies”, discover how enjoyable learning history could be. We naively assumed that just putting these delightful books on the website would be enough—they were so excellent, we didn’t think any additional promotion was necessary.

As it turns out, most people need a nudge in the right direction and that is the job of this blog. We intend to post book reviews, historical commentaries, poems, quotes, and illustrations, all intended to increase general curiosity about classical history. Although some of the books on our website are quite well known, others have yet to be discovered, and it is those “undiscovered” books and authors that we would most like to introduce to other history lovers. While we’re at it, I’ll probably put in a few good words for my hobbies of homeschooling, walking the dog, and avoiding housework.