Aldrich, Nelson Wilmarth (06 November 1841–16 April 1915), U.S. senator, congressman, and businessman, was born in Foster, Rhode Island, the son of Anan Aldrich and Abby Burgess, farmers. Having received a modest education in East Killingly, Connecticut, and at the East Greenwich Academy in Rhode Island, Aldrich was by age seventeen working in Providence. Eventually a large wholesale grocery firm, Waldron, Wightman & Co., hired him as a clerk and bookkeeper. His career there was briefly interrupted in 1862 by service with the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers garrisoning Washington, D.C. After contracting typhoid that same year he returned to Providence and, by 1866, had been elevated to junior partner at Waldron, Wightman. He married Abby Chapman that year; the couple would have eleven children. His wife was of independent means, but Aldrich insisted on accumulating a fortune on his own account and gradually did so. He worked his way up to full partner at Waldron, Wightman, was a director of the Roger Williams Bank by 1872, and by 1877 was president of Providence’s First National Bank. He also headed the city’s Board of Trade in these years....
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Aldrich, Nelson Wilmarth (1841-1915), U.S. senator, congressman, and businessman
Patrick G. Williams
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Aldrich, Nelson Wilmarth (1841-1915)
Maker: Arthur Dove
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Brice, Calvin Stewart (1845-1898), U.S. senator, railroad builder, and financier
Thomas S. Mach
Brice, Calvin Stewart (17 September 1845–15 December 1898), U.S. senator, railroad builder, and financier, was born in Denmark, Ohio, the son of William Kilpatrick Brice, a Presbyterian minister, and Elizabeth Stewart. He received his earliest education at home and in the public schools of Columbus Grove, Putnam County, where his family moved after his third birthday. When Brice turned thirteen years old, his parents placed him in the preparatory program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where because of his father’s limited means he had to work his way through school. He required only one year of preparatory work before being granted admission as a freshman....
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Couzens, James (1872-1936), businessman, mayor of Detroit, and U.S. senator
Melvin G. Holli
Couzens, James (26 August 1872–22 October 1936), businessman, mayor of Detroit, and U.S. senator, was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, the son of James J. Couzens and Emma Clift, an immigrant couple from England. Raised in a stern Presbyterian household and a lower-income family that lived on the “muddiest” street in town, young Couzens’s education was capped by two years of bookkeeping study at Chatham’s Canada Business College. He worked as a newsboy and then stirring smelly, boiling vats for his father, who had parlayed his skills as a soapmaker and salesman into ownership of a small soap-making factory. Displaying an assertive independence, which contemporaries noted that he had inherited from his stern-willed father, young Couzens set off for Detroit to test his mettle in the larger world and in 1890 was taken on as a railroad car–checker for the Michigan Central. Five years later he became an assistant bookkeeper for Alex Malcomson’s coal business, which brought him into contact with a mechanical tinkerer and automobile pioneer named ...
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Couzens, James (1872-1936)
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Depew, Chauncey Mitchell (1834-1928), public speaker, railroad president, and U.S. senator
Jon C. Teaford
Depew, Chauncey Mitchell (23 April 1834–05 April 1928), public speaker, railroad president, and U.S. senator, was born in Peekskill, New York, the son of Isaac Depew, a shipowner, merchant, and farmer, and Martha Mitchell. After graduating from Peekskill Academy in 1852, Chauncey entered Yale where he forsook the Democratic faith of his father and sided with the antislavery forces of the newly created Republican party. After receiving his diploma in 1856, young Depew began the study of law in the office of a Peekskill attorney and was admitted to the bar in 1858. That same year he was a delegate to the Republican State Convention, and in 1862 and 1863 he served in the New York state legislature, becoming a leader of the GOP caucus during his second session. In 1863 he was elected New York’s secretary of state, a post he held for two years. Throughout this period he developed a reputation as a campaign speaker who could sway a crowd in support of the Republican cause. In an age when oratorical skill was a prerequisite to political success, his gift for speaking proved an invaluable asset....
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Depew, Chauncey Mitchell (1834-1928)
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Glenn, John (18 July 1921–8 Dec. 2016), aviator, astronaut, and United States Senator
Tom D. Crouch
Glenn, John (18 July 1921–8 Dec. 2016), aviator, astronaut, and United States Senator, was born John Herschel Glenn, Jr. in Cambridge, Ohio, the son of John Herschel Glenn, Sr. and Clara Sproat Glenn. The couple subsequently adopted a daughter, Jean. The family moved to New Concord, Ohio shortly after John’s birth where the father established a local plumbing company. Glenn attended local schools, graduating from New Concord High School in ...
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Glenn, John (18 July 1921–8 Dec. 2016)
Maker: NASA
John Glenn, 1998, NASA
courtesy of NASA
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Guthrie, James (1792-1869), secretary of the treasury, U.S. senator, and businessman
Patrick G. Williams
Guthrie, James (05 December 1792–13 March 1869), secretary of the treasury, U.S. senator, and businessman, was born in Bardstown, Kentucky, the son of Adam Guthrie, a planter and politician, and Hannah Polk. Educated at the McAllister Academy in Bardstown, he subsequently worked on Mississippi River flatboats. After reading law with ...
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Hayne, Robert Young (1791-1839), U.S. senator, governor of South Carolina, and railroad president
April D. Folden
Hayne, Robert Young (10 November 1791–24 September 1839), U.S. senator, governor of South Carolina, and railroad president, was born on the Pon Pon rice plantation in the Colleton District of South Carolina, the fifth of fourteen children born to William Hayne, a planter and one of the youngest members of South Carolina’s 1790 constitutional convention, and Elizabeth Peronneau. Owing to the large number of children in the Hayne family, a formal education for Robert was not feasible. After his initial years of educational preparation under Mr. William Mason and Dr. John Smith in Charleston, Hayne studied law in the office of State Senator ...
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Lacock, Abner (1770-1837), state and national leader and canal builder
William Weisberger
Lacock, Abner (09 July 1770–12 April 1837), state and national leader and canal builder, was born on Cub Run, near Alexandria, Virginia, the son of William Lacock and Lovey (maiden name unknown), farmers. Around 1780 his family settled in Washington County in western Pennsylvania; there they bought a 120-acre farm in Amwell Township, and Abner helped his parents in planting and in harvesting crops. Between 1782 and 1786 Lacock attended Thaddeus Dodd’s Academy in Amity, Pennsylvania, and studied mathematics, surveying, and the classics. In 1788 he married Hannah Eddy, and the couple had three sons and four daughters....
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Mahone, William (1826-1895), soldier, railroad executive, and politician
Ethan S. Rafuse
Mahone, William (01 December 1826–08 October 1895), soldier, railroad executive, and politician, was born in Monroe, Virginia, the son of Fielding Mahone, a merchant, and Martha Drew. After studies at Littletown Academy, William entered the Virginia Military Institute in 1844. He graduated in 1847 and afterward taught at the Rappahannock Academy. At the end of the 1848–1849 academic year, he was appointed surveyor of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. He remained in this post until 1852, when he was appointed chief engineer of the Fredericksburg and Valley Plank Road. He left that company one year later to accept the post of chief engineer of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad; in April 1860 he was elected president of the company. In 1855 he married Otelia Butler. Only three of the couple’s thirteen children reached maturity....
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McAdoo, William Gibbs (1863-1941), railroad executive, secretary of the treasury, and U.S. senator
Martin R. Ansell
McAdoo, William Gibbs (31 October 1863–01 February 1941), railroad executive, secretary of the treasury, and U.S. senator, was born in Marietta, Georgia, the son of William Gibbs McAdoo, Sr., and Mary Faith Floyd. His father served in the Tennessee state government and as attorney general in Knoxville before the Civil War. In 1863 his parents moved to Georgia intending to reside on his mother’s family plantation, but bleak prospects forced them to stop in Marietta and then settle in Milledgeville, the old state capital and McAdoo’s childhood home. During the last years of the war, McAdoo’s father fought in Georgia as a Confederate officer. Like many southerners McAdoo’s parents never recovered financially after the war, but they tried to replace material advantage with intellectual pursuits. His mother published several romantic novels of the Old South, and both parents wrote essays and book reviews for the local press. McAdoo’s father struggled to find work in Milledgeville before securing a professorship at the University of Tennessee in 1877 and moving the family back to Knoxville....
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McAdoo, William Gibbs (1863-1941)
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Rollins, Edward Henry (1824-1889), U.S. senator and congressman, and railroad executive
Lex Renda
Rollins, Edward Henry (03 October 1824–31 July 1889), U.S. senator and congressman, and railroad executive, was born in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, the son of Daniel Rollins and Mary Plumer, farmers. Rollins attended the Franklin Academy in Dover, and the Berwick Academy in Maine, but lack of funds prevented him from enrolling at Dartmouth College. Aside from a brief tenure as a Rollinsford common schoolteacher, he worked as a drugstore clerk in Concord, New Hampshire, and Boston until 1847, when he bought his own establishment opposite the statehouse in Concord. Two years later he married Ellen Elizabeth West; they had five children....
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Stanford, Leland (1824-1893), corporation head, governor of California, and U.S. senator
William Deverell
Stanford, Leland (09 March 1824–21 June 1893), corporation head, governor of California, and U.S. senator, was born Amasa Leland Stanford in Watervliet, New York, the son of prosperous gentry parents Josiah Stanford and Elizabeth Phillips. Josiah Stanford was an innkeeper, landowner, and bridge and road contractor; he was also a strong supporter of the Erie Canal. Leland (he rarely used his first name) Stanford attended local schools until adolescence and then was educated at home under the tutelage of his mother. Legend has it that young Stanford was a voracious reader; books do not seem to have been of much interest to him in later life. In his late teens, Stanford attended the nearby Clinton Liberal Institute and, later, the Cazenovia Seminary. He read law with the Albany firm of Wheaton, Doolittle and Hadley and was admitted to the bar in 1848. That same year Stanford traveled to Port Washington, Wisconsin, to begin his legal practice. Stanford married Jane Lathrop ( ...
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Stanford, Leland (1824-1893)
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Van Winkle, Peter Godwin (1808-1872), lawyer, businessman, and politician
Leonard Schlup
Van Winkle, Peter Godwin (07 September 1808–15 April 1872), lawyer, businessman, and politician, was born in New York City, the son of Peter Van Winkle, a merchant, and Phoebe Godwin. Van Winkle attended local elementary and secondary schools. One of his interests was writing poems, which were published in several literary journals. In 1831 he married Juliette Rathbun of Paramus, New Jersey; they had six children, three of whom died in infancy. Van Winkle remained a widower after his wife’s death in 1844....
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Worthington, Thomas (1773-1827), entrepreneur, politician, and U.S. senator
Donald J. Ratcliffe
Worthington, Thomas (16 July 1773–20 June 1827), entrepreneur, politician, and U.S. senator, was born near Charlestown, Berkeley County, Virginia (now Jefferson County, W.Va.), the son of Robert Worthington, a prominent planter, and Margaret Matthews, from Frederickton, Maryland, who was of Irish background. Orphaned by the age of seven, he received little formal education and in May 1791 went to sea for two years. On his return he farmed the Berkeley County estate, took up surveying, and bought up Virginia military land warrants that he located near Chillicothe in the Northwest Territory. In December 1796 he married Eleanor Van Swearingen of Shepherdstown, Virginia, herself an orphan with a rich property. The couple had ten children. In spring 1798 Worthington freed his slaves and moved his family to Chillicothe; they were joined by his brother-in-law and lifelong political ally, ...
