Welcome to American National Biography Online

This update features six new biographies with a focus on important figures in the history of business in the United States. It includes computer pioneer William Hewlett; pathbreaking advertising executive Jean Wade Rindlaub; financier and philanthropist David Rockefeller; Frank Stanley Beveridge, who led the “party plan” sales trend of the mid-twentieth century; influential finance journalist W. M. Kiplinger; and John Askin, a fur trader in the Great Lakes region during the Revolutionary Era.

This update features thirteen new biographies in celebration of Women’s History Month. It includes the suffragists Nina Allender, Margaret Foley, and Rose Winslow; novelist and playwright Neith Boyce; Winnebago artist and educator Angel De Cora; Olympic gold medal winner Alice Coachman; Maria Gertrudes “La Tules” Barceló, a nineteenth-century saloon owner.

This update features six new biographies in celebration of Black History Month. It includes rock and roll pioneer Bo Diddley; feminist lawyer and activist Flo Kennedy; transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson; gender defying blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley; Lerone Bennett, Jr., who led Ebony magazine during the civil rights movement; and James Saules, a sailor whose life likely inspired Oregon’s 1844 racial exclusion law.