I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where I lived in a five-room flat above a butcher shop and a produce market. My brother, Tom, was six and a half years older than my twin, Judy, and me. Childhood was fairly happy and carefree until just before my tenth birthday, when a tragic event changed the course of my life. At a church youth event, my twin, Judy, was found at the bottom of a swimming pool long after the swim session was over and did not survive.

I learned for the first time how much my parents loved their children, as evidenced by their profound grief over losing Judy and by how differently I was treated, as though I was a fragile treasure. However, my most important discovery was that while death is the final event of life on earth, it is not the end. We are all eternal beings. When I expressed to my parents how much I hoped to see Judy again, over and over they would point me to our Christian faith and tell me to be serious about it, so I could see her again.

Life moved on, and I attended junior high and high school near my home, followed by attending the University of Cincinnati. In 1974, I graduated with a BA in Psychology, which I have never formally used, because working with children became a passion of mine during my summers working at camps. When my friend told me about a job opening in the field of outdoor education that didn’t require a teaching degree but did require outdoor skills, I jumped at it. It was while working in outdoor education that I learned to tell stories.

I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ in 1977. He led me to move to Alaska to attend Bible college. After saving three years while I worked at a live-in school for mentally handicapped students as an aid, I moved there in 1982. Following the completion of Bible college, I felt led to take a job at the church’s Christian school, where I taught dyslexic students for nearly twelve years. I loved teaching, and interacting with my students always made my days happy.

During that time, I met Steve, the love of my life, an engineer who worked inspecting highways and bridges and docks and airports while they were built or renovated. We’ve now been married over thirty years, and we have two daughters, Stephanie and Sarah, whom we adopted from China.

In the last few years, our family has grown, as our older daughter Stephanie has married a dashing deputy sheriff, David, and presented us with our first adorable grandchild, Colson.

Hello, I’m Nancy Winniford, a storyteller and author from Anchorage, in the Last Frontier, Alaska. I’m happy to provide fun, fascinating stories about life in earlier days in this country via books, audio books, digital downloads, MP4s, and various other formats, which show history in a positive light and which are amusing and uplifting. Having been both a teacher and a home school mom, I understand how frustrating it can be to find positive but entertaining material about our early history, which will engage our kids’ minds and hearts and lead them to emulate people of good character. I’m passionate about being that person who provides such content!

I’ve been a volunteer storyteller ever since leaving my second outdoor education job. I dressed in a costume and told tall tales about my character and her mishaps and adventures in America’s earlier years in frontier settings. At first, I adapted other people’s stories to fit my character, but when I moved to Alaska, I began writing my own stories. Children seemed to universally enjoy my stories, and I told them at camps, churches, and schools, even traveling to villages in Bush Alaska. Now, I’d like to present my stories to the world, so I started Mz. Grundy’s Business.

It is my hope that you enjoy learning about our country through the eyes of Mz. Grundy just as much as I have enjoyed putting the stories together. Our nation has been blessed to have many visionaries, entrepreneurs, heroes, innovators, and risk-taking pioneers, whose lives are both amazing and instructive. While we can learn from both their accomplishments and their flaws, we should celebrate the good that people do and the legacies they leave behind. Enjoy the fun Mz. Grundy brings to life, too, her crazy mishaps and her frontier life in 19th century America!