Historian of Early America
Meet the Author
S. Scott Rohrer is a historian of early America who studies the impact of religion on society and politics. His first book examined how evangelicalism influenced assimilation in the Southern backcountry, and his second was an ambitious exploration of Protestantism's influence on migration in the United States over three centuries. His two most recent books, both published by Penn State University Press, are on religion and the American Revolution: one focused on a radical Presbyterian minister, and the second on a conservative Anglican minister who rejected revolution and bitterly opposed independence.
Scott, whose forebearers were Swiss-German Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pa., was born and raised in New Jersey. A graduate of Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J., he received a B.A. in journalism and history at Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in U.S. history at the University of Virginia. In addition to researching and writing books on early America, he has worked as a historian consultant at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Lynchburg, Va., and at Old Salem, the restored 18th-century Moravian town in Winston-Salem, N.C. Along with his wife, Scott restored an antebellum house in Salisbury, N.C., that is on the National Register of Historic Places.
He now lives near Washington, D.C., where he worked for more than 20 years as an editor at National Journal magazine and CQ Researcher. Scott has also worked as a freelance editor for American Heritage and copyedited history books on early America for the University of North Carolina Press and the University of Alabama Press.