Gail Shaffer Blankenau is a professional genealogist, historian, speaker, and author. She is the author of Journey to Freedom: Uncovering the Grayson Sisters’ Escape from Nebraska
Territory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024). She holds an MA degree with honors in history from the University of Nebraska–Kearney and in 2023 she received the James L.
Sellers prize for her article about the Grayson sisters in a volume of Nebraska History magazine. Blankenau is from Nebraska and currently lives in Lincoln, where she also serves on the state advisory board for the digitization of historic Nebraska newspapers.
