Mary Jo Ignoffo

Mary Jo Ignoffo, author of Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune, available from the University of Missouri Press, is a historian committed to reaching beyond academia to present history to the public through exhibits, books, articles, lectures and forums. The Chicago-born, Los Angeles-raised, longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area has spent much of the last twenty years researching and writing about California and community history. Her work with museums includes the permanent outdoor Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit in Sunnyvale, California and permanent and changing exhibits at Heritage Park Museum, also in Sunnyvale. She has been curator for more than ten installations at the California History Center at De Anza College in Cupertino, and historian and author for the 2010 exhibit on Sarah Winchester at the Los Altos History Museum in Los Altos, California. Her Gold Rush Politics (2000) is a detailed narrative about Californias first legislature convened in 1849 as the Gold Rush erupted, and as people in California waited on the U.S. Congress to admit the territory as the nations thirty-first state. This publication was sponsored by the California State Senate as its Sesquicentennial Project, celebrating Californias 150 years of statehood, and earned Ignoffo a Resolution from the California State Legislature. Ignoffos articles have appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, Santa Clara Magazine, and The Californian. She has been interviewed for documentaries including Sunnyvale Voices, a film compilation of stories about the defense and agricultural industries in California, and Million Dollar Dirt about the demise of farmland in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ignoffo has worked as a preservation consultant, participating in surveys of historic buildings undertaken in compliance with Californias Office of Historic Preservation. Mary Jo Ignoffo teaches U.S. history and topics in California history at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. She resides in Santa Clara with her husband and two children. "