Benton, Thomas Hart, Jr. (05 September 1816–10 April 1879), frontier educator and legislator, was born in Williamson County, Tennessee, the son of Samuel Benton, a congressman. His mother’s name is unknown. His uncle and namesake practiced law as an associate of Andrew Jackson...
12
Article
Benton, Thomas Hart, Jr. (1816-1879), frontier educator and legislator
Kathleen S. Brown
Article
Brierton, John (1572-1619), explorer and historian
Robert L. Gale
Brierton, John (1572–1619), explorer and historian, whose name was sometimes spelled Brereton, was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, the son of Cuthbert Brierton, a dealer in textile fabrics, and Joan Howse. He was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, from which he earned a B.A. in 1592–1593 and an M.A. in 1596. In 1598 he became an Anglican deacon and entered the priesthood later the same year. His first curacy was in Lawshall, Suffolk. While there he met a family named Bacon, members of which were cousins of ...
Article
Cloud, Henry Roe (1884-1950), Native American educator and leader
Sheridan Zacher Fahnestock
Cloud, Henry Roe (28 December 1884–09 February 1950), Native American educator and leader, was born on the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska, the son of Chayskagah (White Buffalo) and Aboogenewingah (Hummingbird), who lived by trapping and gathering. He was called Wohnaxilayhungah, or Chief of the Place of Fear (the battleground). He was named Henry Cloud by a reservation school administrator and as a boy was the tribe’s first convert to Christianity. After his parents died in 1898 and further Indian school education, he went to the Mount Hermon School, a workstudy school in Massachusetts, and thence to Yale, becoming that university’s first Native American graduate, in 1910. As a college sophomore he worked successfully for the release of Apache prisoners who were incarcerated at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, because their leader, ...
Image
Cloud, Henry Roe (1884-1950)
In
Henry Roe Cloud. Courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical Society.
Article
Darton, Nelson Horatio (1865-1948), geological mapper, groundwater specialist, and bibliographer
Ellis L. Yochelson
Darton, Nelson Horatio (17 December 1865–28 February 1948), geological mapper, groundwater specialist, and bibliographer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of William Darton, Jr., a shipbuilder and civil engineer, and Caroline Matilda Thayer. Darton was a self-trained geologist who dropped out of public school before the age of thirteen to apprentice as a chemist in his uncle’s business. He became a member of the American Chemical Society at age sixteen and shortly thereafter started his own business, selling distilled water. As a practical chemist he became interested in minerals and collected in New Jersey. By age seventeen, Darton had spoken before the New York Academy of Sciences and published his first paper. The conclusion he derived from fieldwork was that some of the rock strata in eastern New Jersey were ancient lava flows, a new concept at that time, but one that was immediately accepted....
Article
Dupratz, Antoine Simon Le Page (1695-1758), pioneer and historian
Robert L. Gale
Dupratz, Antoine Simon Le Page (1695–1758), pioneer and historian, was probably born in the Netherlands, according to some nineteenth-century historians. He considered himself French, however, once calling France “ma patrie.” He was a member of a regiment of dragoons fighting under Louis XIV of France in the German campaigns during the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended in 1713. By 1718 he had studied architecture, hydraulic engineering, and mathematics and was eager to seek adventure in the New World. He joined the Compagnie de la Louisiane ou d’Occident (also called the Company of the West and the Mississippi Company), which had been founded in 1717 by John Law—a Scottish economist and financier under Louis XV of France—for the purpose of extending the French empire into Louisiana....
Article
Farabee, William Curtis (1865-1925), anthropologist and explorer
Eleanor M. King
Farabee, William Curtis (07 February 1865–24 June 1925), anthropologist and explorer, was born near Sparta in Morris township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Farabee and Susannah Henkins (occupations unknown). He attended public school and studied at the California State Normal School from 1885 to 1887 before graduating from Waynesburg College in 1894. He was then a teacher and public school principal for five years. In 1897 he married Sylvia Manilla Holdren; they had no children. He obtained an M.A. in anthropology from Harvard University in 1900, followed by a Ph.D. in 1903. From 1903 to 1912 he taught anthropology at Harvard....
Article
Fleete, Henry (1602-1661), English colonial merchant and Indian interpreter
J. Frederick Fausz
Fleete, Henry (1602–1661), English colonial merchant and Indian interpreter, was born in County Kent, England, the son of William Fleete, a lawyer and country squire, and Deborah Scott. Residing in America after 1621, Fleete is best known for pioneering the Potomac River beaver trade between the late 1620s and early 1630s and for guiding Lord Baltimore’s colonists to their first Maryland settlement in March 1634....
Article
Girty, Simon (1741-1818), British Loyalist and frontier warrior
John Ferling
Girty, Simon (1741–18 February 1818), British Loyalist and frontier warrior, was born near Harrisburg in colonial Pennsylvania, the son of farmers. One of at least four children born to Simon Girty and Mary Newton, young Simon was raised in modest circumstances. He received no formal education and remained illiterate. When only ten years of age, his father was killed by an Indian. Girty later maintained that his stepfather met a similar fate. In the course of the French and Indian War, Simon was captured by the Seneca and held captive for thirty-six months. During his captivity, Girty became familiar with the language of his captors....
Article
Gould, Laurence McKinley (1896-1995), educator, geologist, and explorer
Richard Harmond
Gould, Laurence McKinley (22 August 1896–21 June 1995), educator, geologist, and explorer, was born in Lacota, Michigan, the son of Herbert Gould and Anna Updike, farmers. In 1914 he left the family farm and moved to Boca Raton, Florida, where he taught in a one-room schoolhouse. He also helped to found a Sunday school class and with his students published the ...
Article
Harriot, Thomas (1560-1621), scientist, linguist, and author of the first English book on North America
David B. Quinn
Harriot, Thomas (1560–02 July 1621), scientist, linguist, and author of the first English book on North America, was born in Oxford (city or county), England; his parentage is unknown. As an undergraduate he entered St. Mary’s Hall (attached to Oriel College, Oxford) in 1576, matriculated in the University of Oxford in 1557, and graduated B.A. in 1580. He never married....
Article
Hatathli, Ned (1923-1973), Navajo leader and educator
Peter Iverson
Hatathli, Ned (11 October 1923–16 October 1973), Navajo leader and educator, was born in Coalmine Mesa, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation. His parents’ names are not available, but they probably herded sheep and farmed. Hatathli was one of ten children, and he was reared in a traditional Navajo family of this time. Hatathli grew up near the western Navajo settlement of Tuba City, Arizona. In common with most Navajo children of this period, he helped herd the livestock of his parents and extended family and probably imagined himself living a life comparable to that of his older relatives. Unlike many children of this time, however, he was encouraged by one of those relatives to go to school. The heavy-handed assimilation of Bureau of Indian Affairs schools—denying the use of the Navajo language and discouraging other dimensions of the people’s culture—had reduced enrollment. Even though Hatathli began his education at a boarding school, he came of age in the 1930s, when changing BIA philosophies fostered a greater degree of cultural pluralism, including more appreciation for Indian languages and arts. Hatathli eventually attended Haskell Institute, a prominent bureau school in Lawrence, Kansas, and then served in the U.S. Navy before returning home to northern Arizona. In the town of Flagstaff, bordering the Navajo reservation, he attended and graduated from Arizona State Teachers College, known today as Northern Arizona University....
Article
Huntington, Ellsworth (1876-1947), explorer and geographer
Keay Davidson
Huntington, Ellsworth (16 September 1876–17 October 1947), explorer and geographer, was born in Galesburg, Illinois, the son of Henry Strong Huntington, a minister, and Mary Lawrence Herbert. The family moved to Gorham, Maine, after his birth. Huntington was close to his mother, “to whom I owe most,” as he later wrote in dedicating a book to her. When he was twelve years old the family moved to Milton, Massachusetts. He graduated near the top of his class at Milton High School and passed his Harvard entrance examinations, but family financial pressures forced him initially to attend the less expensive Beloit College, where he wrote for the college newspaper and yearbook....
Article
Ii, John Papa (03 August 1800–02 May 1870), native Hawaiian jurist and historian
David W. Shideler
Ii, John Papa (03 August 1800–02 May 1870), native Hawaiian jurist and historian, was born at Waipio, Ewa, Oahu Island, Kingdom of Hawaii, the son of Malamaekeeke and Wanaoa, descendants of the chiefs of Hawaii Island. Ii’s family were intimates and junior relatives of the ruling royal family, the Kamehameha dynasty. He was named Papa Ii (pronounced ēē) after an uncle who held a particularly high station in the Kamehameha court. He took the name John (Ioane) upon his conversion to Christianity. John Papa Ii was born into the aristocracy of ancient Hawaii and was a child of privilege. The family had been granted the rich lands at Waipio following the conquest of Oahu by King ...
Article
Malo, Davida (1795-1853), native Hawaiian scholar and counselor of the high chiefs
Malcolm Nāea Chun
Malo, Davida (18 February 1795–21 October 1853), native Hawaiian scholar and counselor of the high chiefs, also known as David, was born in Keauhou, North Kona, Hawaii, the son of Aoao, a warrior in the court of high chief Kamehameha the Great, and his wife, Heone. During Malo’s youth, which was the early postcontact period, after 1778, he was trained as a traditional court genealogist under the island’s foremost genealogist, Auwae Kaaloa. Malo became intimate with much of the traditional culture of Hawaiian chiefly society, particularly its worldview, religion, and politics during a period of transition due to the immense influence of Western (Euro-American) explorers and adventurers and the internal struggles for the unification of the island under one sovereign....
Article
McNickle, D’Arcy (1904-1977), author, government official, and anthropologist
Frederick E. Hoxie
McNickle, D’Arcy (18 January 1904–15 October 1977), author, government official, and anthropologist, was born William D’Arcy McNickle at St. Ignatius, Montana, on the Flathead Indian reservation, the youngest child of William McNickle and Philomene Parenteau, farmers. D’Arcy McNickle’s maternal grandparents, Isidore Parenteau and Judith Plante, were members of the Canadian Metis community, which traced its heritage to French, Chippewa, and Cree ancestors. They had fled from Saskatchewan to Montana following their participation in the Metis rebellion in 1885. McNickle’s father, the son of Irish immigrants, had come from Pittsburgh to Montana to work on the Northern Pacific Railroad....
Article
Morris, Edward Joy (1815-1881), legislator, author, and diplomat
Norman B. Ferris
Morris, Edward Joy (16 July 1815–31 December 1881), legislator, author, and diplomat, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of unknown ancestry. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from Harvard College in 1836. He studied law and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1842, while serving in the Pennsylvania assembly, 1841–1843. Morris served one term as a Whig in Congress, 1843–1845. When his bid for reelection failed, he resumed his law practice. In 1847 he married Elizabeth Gatliff Ella of Philadelphia, with whom he had two daughters....
Article
Powell, John Wesley (1834-1902), explorer, geologist, and anthropologist
Don D. Fowler
Powell, John Wesley (24 March 1834–23 September 1902), explorer, geologist, and anthropologist, was born in Mount Morris, New York, the son of Joseph Powell, a tailor and Methodist Episcopal licensed exhorter, and Mary Dean. Powell’s parents, who were emigrants from England, moved the family successively west and finally settled in Wheaton, Illinois. Young Powell’s education was intermittent but included some course work at Wheaton and Oberlin Colleges. He worked on the family farm and taught school, but his real interests lay in all phases of natural history and in archaeology. He made numerous collections of natural objects, often by traveling overland or alone in a boat along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He became well known among amateur natural historians and was elected secretary of the Illinois Society of Natural History in March 1861....
Image
Powell, John Wesley (1834-1902)
In
John Wesley Powell. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-20230).
Article
Pratt, Daniel (1809-1887), wanderer, eccentric, and lecturer
Murray M. Horowitz
Pratt, Daniel (11 April 1809–20 June 1887), wanderer, eccentric, and lecturer, was born in the Prattville section of Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel Pratt, Jr., and Mary Hall. The roots of the distinguished Pratt family go back to revolutionary times; Daniel’s father was a humbler member of the strain. Daniel was the second of his ten children and outlived all of them except possibly one....
12
