William Allen (1970 - 1879)

William Allen was born in Edenton, North Carolina and moved to Chillicothe, Ohio in 1819, after his parents’ death. He was of Quaker ancestry. Allen and his sister Mary Granberry Allen lived in Chillicothe together. His sister married Reverend Pleasant Thurman, and their son, Allen G. Thurman, followed in his uncle’s footsteps, becoming a lawyer and […]

Oscar Allen (1882 - 1936)

Oscar Allen was born in a log cabin in Winn Parish to Asa Levi Allen and the former Sophronia Perkins. He attended Winn Parish schools, the Springfield Normal School and Business College in Springfield, Missouri, and Trinity University, a private institution then in Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas in Ellis County, Texas (Trinity is now […]

Henry Watkins Allen (1820 - 1866)

Henry Watkins Allen enlisted as a Private in the 4th Louisiana Infantry Regiment but was quickly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on August 15, 1861. Allen became the regiment’s Colonel on March 1, 1862. He was seriously wounded at Shiloh and Baton Rouge. Colonel Allen met Sarah Morgan on November 2, 1862, when he was still […]

Heman Allen (1779 - 1852)

Heman Allen was born in Poultney, Vermont to Heber Allen and Sarah Owen. He attended the common schools. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1795, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1801. He began the practice of law in Colchester, Vermont. He was town clerk of Colchester from 1807 until 1817. He served […]

John Pintard (1759 - 1844)

John Pintard was a descendant of Antoine Pintard, a Huguenot from La Rochelle, France. He was orphaned when his mother died when he was “a fortnight old” and his father died when he was about eighteen months old. His father, John, was a seagoing merchant, and his mother was Mary Cannon. He was raised by […]

Samuel Wilkeson (1781 - 1848)

Samuel Wilkeson (1781–1848) was mayor of Buffalo, New York, serving 1836–1837. He was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on June 1, 1781, a child of immigrants from Northern Ireland. Around 1802 he married Jane Oram and moved to Mahoning County, Ohio where he built a farm and the first grist mill in the area. He later […]

Edgar Jewett (1843 - 1924)

In 1849, his family moved to Buffalo, New York. His father, John Cotton Jewett, established a company to manufacture refrigerators and later other household conveniences including ice chests, porcelain-lined coolers, water coolers, toiletware, birdcages, spittoons, bathing apparatus, and hospital and laboratory equipment. He was married to Elizabeth Foster Danforth on October 3, 1865. They had […]

George Clinton (1807 - 1885)

George Clinton was born on April 21, 1807 in New York City to Maria Franklin (1775-1818) and DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828), while the latter was serving as Mayor of New York City. His father later became a U.S. Senator and the 6th Governor of New York. He was the grandson of Major General James Clinton (1736-1812), […]

Solomon Haven (1810 - 1861)

Solomon George Haven (November 27, 1810 – December 24, 1861) was a U.S. Representative from New York and Mayor of the City of Buffalo, New York, serving in 1846–1847. He was born in Guilford, New York on November 27, 1810. He taught school and studied law and on January 10, 1835, moved to Buffalo and finished […]

Mary Talbert (1866 - 1923)

Mary Talbert was born in Oberlin, Ohio in 1866. As the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886, Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree, then called an S.P. degree. She entered the field of education, first as a teacher in 1886 at Bethel University in Little Rock and then […]

Hannah Solomon (1858 - 1942)

Hannah Solomon was born on January 14, 1858, the fourth of ten siblings, to Michael and Sarah Greenebaum. Her father, Michael Greenebaum, was part of the earliest group of Jews to settle in the frontier city of Chicago. Solomon’s parents set an example of strong civic involvement; her mother organized Chicago’s first Jewish Ladies Sewing […]

Lillian Ngoyi (1911 - 1980)

Lillian Ngoyi joined the ANC Women’s League in 1952; she was at that stage a widow with two children and an elderly mother to support, and worked as a seamstress. A year later she was elected as President of the Women’s League. On 9 August 1956, Ngoyi led a women’s march along with Helen Joseph, […]

Helen Suzman (1917 - 2009)

Helen Suzman, a lifelong citizen of South Africa, was born Helen Gavronsky in 1917 to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky, Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. Suzman matriculated in 1933 from Parktown Convent, Johannesburg. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. At age 19, she married Dr Moses Suzman (died 1994), who was considerably older than […]

Ruth First (1925 - 1982)

Ruth First’s parents, Julius First and Matilda Levetan, immigrated to South Africa from Latvia as Jewish immigrants in 1906 and became founder members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the forerunner of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ruth First was born in 1925 and brought up in Johannesburg. She too joined the […]

Joe Slovo (1926 - 1995)

Joe Slovo was born in Obeliai, Lithuania to a Jewish family which emigrated to the Union of South Africa when he was eight. His father worked as a truck driver in Johannesburg. Although his family were religious, he became an atheist who retained respect for “the positive aspects of Jewish culture”. Slovo left school in […]

Carrie Neiman (1883 - 1953)

Carrie Neiman was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Jewish German immigrants Delia (Bloomfield) and Jacob Marcus. Jacob was a cotton broker, a fairly common occupation in the South. In 1895 the family moved to Hillsboro, Texas. Carrie did not receive a formal education but was educated at home in a European mileiu, reading German newspapers […]

Charles Nash (1864 - 1948)

Charles Nash was born to a poor farming family in Cortland, Illinois, on what is now Route 38 — Lincoln Highway. His mother was Anna E. “Annie” Cadwell (1829–1909) who married David L. Nash. Other Nash siblings included Mazovia (b. 1862), George C. (b. 1866) and Laura W. (b. 1868). After Charles’ parent’s separation, at age […]

Gerd Bucerius (1906 - 1995)

Gerd Bucerius (1906, Hamm, Westphalia – 1995) was a German politician and journalist, one of the founding members of Die Zeit. He is the namesake of the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg and of the Bucerius Kunst Forum, an art gallery. Gerd Bucerius was born in Westphalia, and studied law in Freiburg, Berlin, and Hamburg. Upon […]

John Morehead (1927 - 1866)

John Morehead (July 4, 1796 – August 27, 1866) was the 29th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1841 to 1845. He is known as “the Father of Modern North Carolina.” Born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Morehead was the son of Obedience (Motley) and John Morehead. He moved to Rockingham County, North Carolina […]

Susanna Agnelli (1922 - 2009)

Born in Turin, Susanna Agnelli was the daughter of Edoardo Agnelli and Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte, a daughter of the Prince di San Faustino and his Kentucky-born wife Jane Campbell. Her brother, Gianni Agnelli, was the head of Fiat until 1996; members of the Agnelli family are still the controlling shareholders of the company. In […]

Thomas Lipton (1848 - 1931)

Thomas Lipton was born in a tenement in Crown Street, Glasgow on 10 May 1848. His parents, Thomas Lipton senior and Frances Lipton (née Johnstone), were Ulster-Scots from County Fermanagh. The Liptons had been smallholders in Fermanagh for generations but, by the late 1840s, Thomas Lipton’s parents had been forced to leave Ireland due to […]

Louis Liggett (1875 - 1946)

Louis Kroh Liggett (April 4, 1875 – June 5, 1946) was an American drug store magnate who founded Rexall and was later chairman of United Drug Company. He was a member of the Republican National Committee for Massachusetts. Louis Liggett was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 4, 1875. His parents were John Templeton Liggett and […]

Arthur Letts (1862 - 1923)

Arthur Letts, Sr. was born in England. In 1882 he emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and found employment in a large dry goods store. When the Red River Rebellion broke out in the Northwest of Canada, he volunteered. He was awarded a silver medal and clasp for distinguished service, and a grant of land by […]

Henry Leland (1843 - 1932)

Henry Leland was born to Leander and Zilpha, the youngest of 8, in Vermont in 1843. Sources differ on the town of his birth (Danville versus Barton); he grew up in Barton. He learned engineering and precision machining in the Brown & Sharpe plant at Providence, Rhode Island. He subsequently worked in the firearms industry, […]

Herman Lay (1909 - 1982)

Herman Lay was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 6, 1909. His father, Jesse N. Lay, worked for International Harvester, first as a bookkeeper in Charlotte and later as a commercial salesman in Columbia, South Carolina, where the family moved. By 1920, they moved to Greenville, South Carolina. In 1922 his mother died of […]

Joan Kroc (1928 - 2003)

Joan Kroc was born on August 27, 1928, in West St. Paul, Minnesota. Her father, Charles Smart Mansfield, was a store keeper, later a railroad telegraph operator and salesman. Her mother, Gladys Bonnebelle Mansfield was born April 5, 1906 in Luck, Wisconsin to Herman Conrad Peterson and his wife Emma Bonnebelle. Joan’s mother was an […]

Fred Turner (1933 - 2013)

Fred Turner grew up in Des Moines and Chicago, and graduated from Drake University in 1954. Fred Turner began his career at McDonald’s in 1956 as a grill operator, and quickly rose through the ranks. He was named Operations Vice President in 1958, when the firm had only 34 employees. In that role, he established strict […]

John Kluge (1914 - 2010)

John Kluge was born to a Presbyterian family in Chemnitz, Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1922. He earned his B.A. degree in economics from Columbia University in 1937. Prior to attending Columbia University, Kluge went to Wayne State University for two years. He was of Scots Irish, English and German heritage. During World […]

Solomon Juneau (1793 - 1856)

After landing at Fort Michilimackinac in 1816, Solomon Juneau worked as a clerk in the fur trade before becoming an agent for the American Fur Company in Milwaukee. Juneau settled an area east of the Milwaukee River called Juneautown (present day East Town) in 1818, which later joined with George H. Walker’s Walker’s Point and […]

Miss Elizabeth (1960 - 2003)

Miss Elizabeth Professional wrestling has been littered with many female valets and managers in its history. From Baby Doll to Missy Hyatt to Dark Journey to Sunshine…there have been many women who redefined the role of women in the business. It wasn’t just burly, unattractive women in front of the cameras anymore. In the WWF, […]