Boyd, John Parker (21 December 1764–04 October 1830), army officer and soldier of fortune, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of James Boyd and Susanna (maiden name unknown). He developed military interests as a boy, and in 1786 he was appointed ensign in a Massachusetts infantry regiment suppressing Shays’s Rebellion (see ...
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Boyd, John Parker (1764-1830), army officer and soldier of fortune
William B. Skelton
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Browne, John Ross (1821-1875), writer, world traveler, and government agent
Richard H. Dillon
Browne, John Ross (11 February 1821–08 December 1875), writer, world traveler, and government agent, was born in Beggars Bush, near Dublin, Ireland, the son of Thomas Egerton Browne and Elana Buck. His father was a refugee from British rule. As the editor of three publications, Thomas Browne satirized British tithing measures and earned the enmity of the Crown, a fine, and a jail sentence for “seditious libel.”...
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Carmichael, William (?–09 February 1795), diplomat and adventurer
Samuel Willard Crompton
Carmichael, William (?–09 February 1795), diplomat and adventurer, was born at “Round Top” in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, the son of William Carmichael, a Scottish immigrant, and Brooke (maiden name unknown), a niece of the second wife of Richard Bennett, a wealthy landowner. Owing to the land and property that came to Carmichael from his mother’s side of the family, he was able to obtain a top-notch American education and to be admitted to the bar in Maryland. Carmichael also traveled to Ireland in 1768 and studied in Edinburgh, Scotland. He traveled throughout the British Isles for a time and when the American Revolution began, he was enjoying a pleasant life in London (where he was known for frequenting alehouses and soliciting the services of prostitutes)....
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Cooper, Merian Coldwell (1893-1973), filmmaker and adventurer
Paul M. Jensen
Cooper, Merian Coldwell (24 October 1893–21 April 1973), filmmaker and adventurer, was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of John C. Cooper, a lawyer, and Mary Coldwell. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy, but resigned in his last year. After a failed attempt to become an aviator early in World War I, he worked for short periods on newspapers and then enlisted in the Georgia National Guard, seeing service in Mexico....
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de Vries, David Pietersen (1593–1655?), merchant adventurer and colonizer
James Homer Williams
de Vries, David Pietersen (1593–1655?), merchant adventurer and colonizer, was born in La Rochelle, France, the son of Pieter Jakobszoon de Vries, a ship captain, and a Dutch mother (name unknown). His father was from Hoorn, a northern Dutch province, and his mother from Amsterdam. They moved to La Rochelle in 1584 and back to Hoorn when David was four. He attended Latin school, obtained a knowledge of geography and astronomy, and learned French, Dutch, and English as a result of his family’s contact with the international Calvinist community....
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Halliburton, Richard (09 January 1900–?24 Mar. 1939), travel writer and adventurer
John Maxwell Hamilton and Carolyn Pione
Halliburton, Richard (09 January 1900–?24 Mar. 1939), travel writer and adventurer, was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, the son of Nelle Nance, a music teacher, and Wesley Halliburton, a civil engineer and land developer. He was brought up in an affluent household in Memphis, Tennessee. Although his father wanted him to stay in Memphis, his mother wanted him to go away to school. Halliburton attended the Lawrenceville prep school, a stepping stone to nearby Princeton, which he entered in 1917. Novelist ...
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Harlan, Josiah (1799-1871), soldier of fortune and adventurer
Samuel Willard Crompton
Harlan, Josiah (12 June 1799– October 1871), soldier of fortune and adventurer, was born in Newlin Township, Pennsylvania, the son of Joshua Harlan, a merchant broker of Philadelphia, and Sarah Hinchman. His parents were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and indications are that Harlan followed in their path of independent thought though certainly not the Quaker ideal of pacifism. Almost nothing is known of his early years. The first prominent event of his career was in 1823, when he journeyed to Asia and entered the employment of the British East India Tea Company. He served as an officiating assistant surgeon in the Bengal artillery under British colonel George Pollock during the first Burmese War (1824–1826). This employment ended with the conclusion of the war, and Harlan traveled to northern India looking for other work. He had already, at the age of twenty-seven, traveled more than most Americans of his time period. He continued to expand his knowledge of the wider world in Afghanistan, which was at that time contested by Afghans, Sikhs, and the officials of the British East India Company, who feared an incursion by the forces of imperial Russia....
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Harrison, Marguerite (23 October 1878–16 July 1967)
William Benton Whisenhunt
Harrison, Marguerite (23 October 1878–16 July 1967), journalist, spy, world traveler, and writer, was born Marguerite Elton Baker in Baltimore, Maryland, to Elizabeth Elton Livezey and Bernard Baker. Her wealthy family made its fortune in transatlantic shipping, and she spent many summers in Europe, where she enhanced her language skills. Her education was a combination of private tutors and attendance at St. Timothy’s School in Catonsville, Maryland, where she experienced some social awkwardness, but she also learned much about the wider world that would influence the rest of her life. After high school, she attended Radcliffe College for one semester and then in 1901 quickly married Thomas Harrison against her parents’ wishes. In contrast to her family’s high standing and social connections, Thomas came from a family of lesser means and status....
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Hayes, Bully (1829-1877), trader, adventurer, and blackbirder
David E. Woodard
Hayes, Bully (1829– March 1877), trader, adventurer, and blackbirder, was born William Henry Hayes in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Henry Hayes, a bargeman in and around the Great Lakes; his mother’s name is unknown. Little is known about Hayes’s early life. His first maritime experience came as a saltwater sailor on voyages around Cape Horn to California. Hayes commanded a total of fifteen vessels over his lifetime....
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Henry, John (1776?–1820?), adventurer
Sylvia B. Larson
Henry, John (1776?–1820?), adventurer, was born in Ireland, the son of a prominent family. Little is known about his early life. He was sent to the United States in 1792 to work for his uncle Daniel McCormick, a New York merchant, and by 1795 he was an editor for the ...
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Johnson, Osa (1894-1953), author, lecturer, and film producer
Dennis Wepman
Johnson, Osa (14 March 1894–07 January 1953), author, lecturer, and film producer, was born Osa Helen Leighty in Chanute, Kansas, the daughter of William Sherman Leighty, a railroad engineer, and Ruby Isabel Holman. In 1910 she left high school to marry Martin Johnson, whom she had met eleven years earlier when he visited Chanute as an eighteen-year-old itinerant photographer. In the meantime he had visited Europe alone and traveled with ...
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Judson, Edward Zane Carroll (20 March 1823–16 July 1886), adventurer and writer
J. Donald Crowley
Judson, Edward Zane Carroll (20 March 1823–16 July 1886), adventurer and writer, known as “Ned Buntline,” was born in Stamford, New York, the son of Levi Judson, a schoolmaster and, later, an attorney; his mother’s name is unknown. After his father moved the family to Philadelphia, the adolescent Judson rebelled and ran away to sea as a cabin boy. He served for about five years on voyages to various Caribbean and South American ports. Judson’s life and career—one might say lives and careers—epitomize a restlessness that made him thirst for adventures and misadventures in- and out-of-doors, and they show that he had a keen eye for the chance to promote himself as heroic in sensationally fictionalized accounts of his own adventures. The list of epithets he inspires is almost encyclopedic: sailor and U.S. Navy officer; soldier; magazine editor; writer of several hundred “shilling shockers,” dime novels, and other “continuous” stories; temperance lecturer (and drunkard); superpatriot to those of Know Nothing (Buntlinite) persuasion, jingoist bigot to others; expert marksman and angler; bigamist; “discoverer” of ...
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Karzhavin, Fedor Vasil’evich (1745-1812), Russian traveler and man of letters
N. N. Bolkhovitinov
Karzhavin, Fedor Vasil’evich (20 January 1745–28 March 1812), Russian traveler and man of letters, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the son of Vasilii Nikitich Karzhavin, a merchant, and Anna Isaevna. He was educated in Paris, where he was exposed to the French Enlightenment. Returning to Russia in 1765, Karzhavin taught the French language in seminary (church college) in 1767–1768 and beginning in 1768 worked as an assistant in the architectural office of V. I. Bazhenov....
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Keyes, Frances Parkinson (1885-1970), writer, editor, and traveler
Marcia B. Dinneen
Keyes, Frances Parkinson (21 July 1885–03 July 1970), writer, editor, and traveler, was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in James Monroe’s house, the daughter of John Henry Wheeler, a scholar and head of the Greek department at the University of Virginia, and Louise Fuller Johnson Underhill. When John Wheeler died in 1887, Louise Wheeler moved to “The Oxbow,” a family home near Newbury, Vermont, where Frances spent the summer months. In the winter months they relocated to Boston so Frances could attend school. Although she did graduate from Miss Winsor’s school in Boston, she described her formal education as “sketchy.”...
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O’Fallon, James (1749-1793), physician, speculator, and adventurer
Harry M. Ward
O’Fallon, James (11 March 1749– December 1793), physician, speculator, and adventurer, was born in Roscommon, western Ireland, the son of William Fallon and Anne Eagan. (O’Fallon added the prefix to his name about 1783.) He studied medicine for two years at the University of Edinburgh (1771–1773), did not graduate, but was licensed by that or another institution as a physician. Thereafter he visited Rome, perhaps in anticipation of entering the priesthood. Subsequently, however, he worked at a hospital in London. In Glasgow in 1774 he was advised by a doctor at the university to go to the colonies, where a revolt was in the making “in favour of Liberty.” As his son John later wrote, “The strong spirit of freedom was already in James, and, (as a genuine Irishman) an hereditary aversion to British oppression” (Draper coll., 34J20)....
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Panton, William (1745?–26 February 1801), merchant-adventurer
William S. Coker
Panton, William (1745?–26 February 1801), merchant-adventurer, was born on the family farm on the Mains of Aberdour some eight miles west of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of John Panton and Barbara Wemyss, farmers. Nothing is known about his education in Scotland. Panton came to America in 1765 and served as an apprentice with John Gordon and Company, merchants and Indian traders, of Charleston. In 1774 he and Philip Moore formed a partnership that lasted for several years. He next joined with Thomas Forbes in the firm of Panton, Forbes and Company, with offices in South Carolina and Georgia. Panton and Forbes, however, were Loyalists, and the American Revolution soon forced them to move to St. Augustine, British East Florida....
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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....
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Ruxton, George Augustus Frederick (1821-1848), soldier, adventurer, and author
Mark L. Gardner
Ruxton, George Augustus Frederick (24 July 1821–29 August 1848), soldier, adventurer, and author, was born in Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire, England, the son of John Ruxton, an army surgeon, and Anna Maria Hay. On 14 July 1835 Ruxton became a cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. After about two years at the academy, Ruxton was apparently expelled and subsequently traveled to Spain, where he participated for a time in that country’s civil war as a cornet of lancers in the British Auxiliary Legion, a unit serving with forces loyal to Queen Isabella II. For his distinguished actions at the Battle of the Bridge of Belascoain, 29 April–1 May 1839, the queen of Spain awarded Ruxton the Cross of the First Class of the National Military Order of San Fernando....
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Salm-Salm, Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclercq Joy (1844-1912), princess, adventurer, and wartime humanitarian
Marie-Luise Frings
Salm-Salm, Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclercq Joy (25 December 1844–21 December 1912), princess, adventurer, and wartime humanitarian, was born in Swanton, Vermont (or southern Canada), the daughter of William Leclercq Joy, a farmer, and his second wife, Julia Willard. Salm-Salm always remained secretive about her youth, thereby feeding romantic rumors about her age, ancestry, and past. After spending some time in Cuba, as she asserted in her autobiography, she arrived in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1861, a vivacious, pretty young woman. There she attracted the attentions of Prince Felix zu Salm-Salm, the adventurous younger son of an old aristocratic German family. After serving in the Prussian and Austrian armies the prince had left Europe to escape his debts and to seek employment in the American Civil War....
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Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah (1856-1928), author and traveler
Susie Lan Cassel
Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah (14 October 1856–03 November 1928), author and traveler, was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the daughter of George Bolles Scidmore and Eliza Catharine Sweeney, missionaries. Her parents’ journeys to Japan and China served as inspiration for Scidmore’s overseas travels in these areas, visits that resulted in nine travel narratives. Educated in private boarding schools and with one year at Oberlin College (1873–1874), Scidmore moved to Washington, D.C., and began a career in writing with letters about high society in the nation’s capital that she published in the ...
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