Edie Adams (1927 - 2008)

Edie Adams Adams was born as Edith Elizabeth Enke in Kingston, Pennsylvania., the only daughter of Sheldon Alonzo Enke and his wife, Ada Dorothy (née Adams). She had an elder brother, Sheldon Adams Enke (June 28, 1922 – July 9, 2001). The family moved to nearby areas such as Shavertown, Grove City and Trucksville and […]

Brian Adams (1964 - 2007)

Brian Adams Brian Adams was born in Kona, Hawaii and was raised in Kealakekua, Hawaii and attended Konawaena High School. After graduating from high school, Adams joined the military, where he began boxing. It was during his time in the military, while stationed in Japan, that he was also exposed to wrestling. Adams was trained […]

Alan “Fluff” Freeman (1927 - 2006)

Born and educated in New South Wales, Australia, Freeman worked as an assistant paymaster/accountant for one of Australia’s largest timber companies after leaving school.  Freeman originally wanted to be an opera singer, but decided his voice was not strong enough. In 1952 he was invited to audition as a radio announcer and commenced working for […]

Edna Gellhorn (1878 - 1970)

Edna Fischel Gellhorn (December 18, 1878 – September 24, 1970) was an American suffragist and reformer, born in St. Louis.  She attended the Mary Institute and Bryn Mawr College, and was the student president at each, as well as an elected trustee of Bryn Mawr. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1900.  She was an […]

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826 - 1898)

Matilda Gage spent her childhood in a house which was used as a station of the Underground Railroad. She faced prison for her actions under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 which criminalized assistance to escaped slaves. Even though she was beset by both financial and physical (cardiac) problems throughout her life, her work for […]

Emily Davison (1872 - 1913)

Davison was born in Blackheath, London, the daughter of Charles Davison (of Morpeth, Northumberland) and Margaret Davison (of Longhorsley, Northumberland). She had two sisters, a brother and half-siblings from her father’s first marriage including a half-brother, retired naval captain Henry Jocelyn Davison, who gave evidence at her inquest. She later attended Kensington High School and […]

Jane Croly (1829 - 1901)

Jane Cunningham was born in England, the daughter of a Unitarian minister, Reverend Joseph Cunningham, and his wife Jane Scott. The family emigrated to the United States when young Jane was twelve. The family first lived in Poughkeepsie, New York and later in Southbridge Massachusetts.  Jane first became interested in journalism while a student; she […]

Prudence Crandall (1803 - 1890)

Prudence Crandall was born on September 3, 1803 to Pardon and Esther Carpenter Crandall, a Quaker couple in the Hope Valley area in the town of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. At the age of 17, her father decided to move the family to the small town of Canterbury, Connecticut. She attended the Friends’ Boarding School in […]

Laura Clay (1849 - 1941)

A daughter of Cassius Marcellus Clay and his wife Mary Jane Warfield, Clay was born at their estate, White Hall, near Richmond, Kentucky. The youngest of four daughters, Laura was raised largely by her mother, due to her father’s long absences as he pursued his political career and activities as an abolitionist. Clay was educated […]

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859 - 1947)

Born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin, Catt spent her childhood in Charles City, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa, graduating in three years. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi, as well as the valedictorian and only woman in her class. She became a […]

Lucy Burns (1879 - 1966)

Lucy Burns was born in New York to an Irish Catholic family. She was described by fellow National Woman’s Party member Inez Haynes Irwin as “blue-eyed and fresh-complexioned; dimpled; and her head is burdened, even as Alice Paul’s, with an enormous weight of hair.” She was extremely beautiful, and lewd men always treated her disrespectfully. […]

Nathan Appleton (1779 - 1861)

Appleton was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, the son of Isaac Appleton and his wife Mary Adams. Appleton’s father was a church deacon, and Nathan was brought up in the “strictest form of Calvinistic Congregationalism.” He was educated in the New Ipswich Academy. He then entered Dartmouth College in 1794, however, that same year […]

Daniel Read Anthony (1824 - 1904)

Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts, one of eight children born to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read. His older sister was Susan B. Anthony.  Anthony first came to Kansas in 1854 as part of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company to fight against the extension of slavery to the Kansas Territory. He settled in Leavenworth in […]

Walter Annenberg (1908 - 2002)

Walter Annenberg was born to a Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on March 13, 1908. He was the only son of Sadie Cecelia née Freedman (1879–1965) and Moses “Moe” Louis Annenberg, who published the Daily Racing Form and purchased The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1936. Annenberg was a stutterer since childhood.  He had seven sisters, whose […]

Thomas Andrews Jr. (1873 - 1912)

Thomas Andrews was born at Ardara House, Comber, County Down, in Ireland, to The Rt. Hon. Thomas Andrews, a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, and Eliza Pirrie. His siblings included John Miller Andrews, the future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and Sir James Andrews, the future Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. Thomas […]

Samuel Andrews (1836 - 1904)

Samuel Andrews (1836–1904) was a chemist and inventor. Born in England, he immigrated to the United States before the American Civil War, and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. He is best known as a partner in the oil refining firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, the major predecessor company of the Standard Oil corporate empire. When […]

Momofuku Ando (1910 - 2007)

With Japan still suffering from a shortage of food in the post-war era, the Ministry of Health tried to encourage people to eat bread made from wheat flour that was supplied by the United States. Ando wondered why bread was recommended instead of noodles, which were more familiar to the Japanese. The Ministry’s response was […]

Stig Anderson (1931 - 1997)

Stig Anderson Anderson was the founder of the Polar Music record label in 1963. Initially beginning his career as a chemistry and mathematics teacher after leaving school at the age of 15, Anderson soon entered the Swedish popular music scene, becoming a music producer, manager and also occasional performer.  Anderson had begun writing songs as […]

Robert Orville Anderson (1917 - 2007)

Robert Orville Anderson was born in Chicago on April 13, 1917, to the Swedish immigrants Hugo A. Anderson and Hilda Nelson. His father was a prominent banker who, Anderson often said, was the first banker in the U.S. “who loaned money on oil in the ground.”  Robert attended the Laboratory Elementary and High Schools of […]

Harold Ackroyd (1877 - 1917)

Harold Ackroyd was born on 18 July 1877 in Southport Lancashire the youngest son of Edward Ackroyd who ran a textile and tailoring business. Edward inherited a sizable fortune from his mother`s family in 1878 and became Chairman of the Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway, a change in fortune which made a private education […]

Creighton Williams Abrams (1914 - 1974)

Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. graduated from West Point in 1936 (he stood 185th out of 276 in the class) and served with the 1st Cavalry Division from 1936 to 1940, being promoted to first lieutenant in 1939 and temporary captain in 1940.  Abrams became an armor officer early in the development of that branch and […]

John Joseph Abercrombie (1798 - 1877)

Abercrombie was born and baptized in Baltimore, Maryland, although some accounts suggest he was a native of Tennessee. The son of John Joseph Abercrombie, Sr. and Sarah DeNormandie, their family was living in Nashville, Tennessee when the younger John entered the United States Military Academy in 1818. Graduating 37th of 40 from the United States […]

William H. Abendroth (1895 - 1970)

William Henry Abendroth, Jr., nicknamed Harry, was the son of a career soldier who served in the American Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War before retiring as a First Sergeant and becoming an instructor in military studies at the University of Idaho. The younger Abendroth was born in Fort Meade, South Dakota, on December 24, […]

Walter Abel (1898 - 1987)

Walter Abel (June 6, 1898 – March 26, 1987) was an American stage and film character actor. Known as a prolific and very dependable character actor, Abel appeared in over 200 films, beginning in the silent film era. Often portraying characters of “responsibility,” (the minister keeping morale up in a war zone in “So Proudly […]

Joseph Carter Abbott (1825 - 1881)

Abbott was born in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1846, having studied there and under private auspices. He studied law at Concord, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. From 1852 to 1857, Abbott was the owner and editor of the Daily American newspaper, in Manchester, New […]

Sir James Abbott (1807 - 1896)

He joined the Bengal Artillery at the age of sixteen. He made a name for himself in the northwest frontier region of India in the middle part of the 19th century. In 1839, he undertook a mission to the Khanate of Khiva as part of the Great Game, the contest for influence in Central Asia […]

Ira Coray Abbott (1824 - 1908)

He served during the Civil War first as Lieutenant Colonel, then Colonel and commander of the 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry regiment. He was wounded in the face at the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, and at the Battle of Gettysburg, his regiment was part of Colonel William S. Tilton’s brigade that fought against attacking Confederates […]

Henry Livemore Abbott (1842 - 1864)

Henry Livermore Abbott, the third of eleven children, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on January 21, 1842, the son of Josiah Gardner Abbott, a successful lawyer and judge. In 1876, Josiah Gardner Abbott was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was a prominent member of the Democratic Party. Henry’s mother, Caroline, was […]

Anderson Ruffin Abbott (1837 - 1913)

Abbott was born in Toronto as the son of Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen (Toyer) Abbott. The Abbotts were a prominent black family in Toronto who had left Alabama as free people of color after their store had been ransacked. After living a short time in New York, they relocated to Upper Canada in 1835 […]

Henry Larcom Abbott (1831 - 1927)

Henry Larcom Abbot was born in Beverly, Massachusetts. Abbot attended West Point and graduated second in his class (which included Jeb Stuart and G. W. Custis Lee) with a degree in military engineering in 1854. Initially he had wanted to join the Artillery, but shortly after graduation, a classmate convinced him to choose the Engineers. […]