Biography

A professor of history at South Suburban College, Bruce S. Allardice is past president of the Northern Illinois Civil War Round Table, and past president of the Civil War Round Table of Chicago. Prof. Allardice has authored or coauthored six books, and numerous articles, on the Civil War. His latest book is Two Years Before the Paddlewheel: Charles F. Gunther, Mississippi River Confederate (State House Press, 2012), the edited diary of Charles F. Gunther, a Confederate steamboat officer who later became Chicago's leading candymaker. Other books include More Generals in Gray (LSU Press 1995) a selection of the History Book Club. He had two books come out in 2008: Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register (U of MO Press), a biographical register of Confederate army colonels, and Kentuckians in Gray (U Press of KY), co-authored with Professor Larry Hewitt. He authored an essay on General Stephen D. Lee for vol. 3 of Confederate Generals in the Western Theater (U. of TN Press 2011). His article on "John E. Smith and the 96th Illinois" appeared in 2015 in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

A former Board Member of the Illinois State Historical Society, Prof. Allardice has presented numerous lectures and presentations on the Civil War and genealogy for Civil War Round Tables, museums, and civic organizations. He is the recipient of the CWRT of Chicago's prestigious Nevins-Freeman Award for distinguished service in Civil War Scholarship and the CWRT movement.

An avid sports historian, Prof. Allardice currently heads up the "Civil War Baseball" subcommittee for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) and is a member of SABR's Biography Committee, specializing in researching the lives of 19th Century ballplayers. His article on The Rise of Baseball in the South received an award from the Society of American Baseball Research for Best Baseball History article of 2012. Prof. Allardice's ground breaking work on the early spread of baseball, done at the request of Major League Baseball, can be found at http://www.protoball.org, the "pre-pro baseball" link. He's also coauthored two articles on Civil War baseball published in the journal Base Ball. He contributed an essay to Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox (SABR, 2015). He is currently newsletter editor of the SABR Origins of Baseball Newsletter.

Prof. Allardice is a graduate of the University of Illinois and a lifelong resident of the Chicago area.