Bennett, Jr., Lerone (17 October 1928–14 February 2018), historian, scholar, journalist, magazine editor, and author, was born Lerone Bennett, Jr. in Clarksdale, Mississippi. His father, Lerone Bennett, Sr., was a chauffeur, and his mother, Alma Reed, was a cook. After his parents divorced when he was young, he and his mother later moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he grew up....
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Bennett, Jr., Lerone (17 October 1928–14 February 2018), historian, scholar, journalist, magazine editor, and author
Margena A. Christian
Article
Bowers, Claude Gernade (1878-1958), journalist, diplomat, and historian
Peter J. Sehlinger
Bowers, Claude Gernade (20 November 1878–21 January 1958), journalist, diplomat, and historian, was born in Westfield, Indiana, the son of Lewis Bowers, a storekeeper, and Juliet Tipton, a milliner and dressmaker. Reared in rural communities in central Indiana, Claude moved to Indianapolis with his divorced mother when he was thirteen. He was a voracious reader and became a confirmed Democrat while at Indianapolis High School. In 1898 Bowers graduated and also won the state oratorical contest but was unable to attend college for lack of funds. Instead he worked for the publishing firm that later became the Bobbs-Merrill Company. In 1900 Bowers became the major editorial writer for the ...
Article
Bradford, John (1749-1830), first printer in Kentucky
Mary Kupiec Cayton
Bradford, John (06 June 1749–20 March 1830), first printer in Kentucky, was born in Prince William (later Fauquier) County, Virginia, the son of Daniel Bradford, a surveyor for Fauquier County, and Alice Morgan. He was one of eleven children in a family that probably also farmed. Bradford’s father taught him the craft of surveying. In 1771 John Bradford married Eliza James; they had five sons and four daughters....
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Brant, Irving Newton (17 January 1885–18 September 1976), biographer, journalist, and historian
Ann T. Keene
Brant, Irving Newton (17 January 1885–18 September 1976), biographer, journalist, and historian, was born in Walker, Iowa, the son of David Brant, the editor of the local newspaper, and Ruth Hurd Brant. Irving Brant decided on a career in journalism. He was educated in local schools and at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, from which he earned a BA in 1909....
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Brickman, William Wolfgang (1913-1986), scholar of the history of education and of comparative education
David S. Webster
Brickman, William Wolfgang (30 June 1913–22 June 1986), scholar of the history of education and of comparative education, was born in New York City, the son of David Shalom Brickman, a cutter in the clothing industry, and Chaya Sarah Shaber. After attending Jewish religious elementary and secondary schools in New York City, Brickman entered the City College of New York, where he earned a B.A. in education in 1934 and an M.S. in education in 1935. He received a Ph.D. in education, with a dissertation on Hermann Lietz, an early twentieth-century German educational reformer, from New York University (NYU) in 1938....
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Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)
In
Charles Brockden Brown. Watercolor on ivory, 1806, by William Dunlap. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; given in loving memory of Katharine Lea Hancock by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Article
Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810), novelist, historian, and editor
Philip Barnard
Brown, Charles Brockden (17 January 1771–22 February 1810), novelist, historian, and editor, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Elijah Brown, a merchant and land conveyancer, and Mary Armitt. The fifth of six children in a prosperous Quaker family in the nation’s most cosmopolitan city and first capital, Brown was shaped in his early years by his Quaker background and the era’s tumultuous revolutionary politics. From 1781 to 1786 he received a classics-oriented secondary education under Robert Proud at the Friends’ Latin School of Philadelphia and displayed an enthusiasm for literary composition. Although his earliest work is lost, he composed derivative poetry in the “primitive” vein, based on the Psalms and Ossian and planned but never completed verse epics on the exploits of Columbus, Pizarro, and Cortez. The period’s political and ideological conflicts touched Brown’s family directly when revolutionary authorities exiled his father to Virginia for several months, deeming the father’s Quaker position of principled neutrality an aid to the British. While Brown’s Quaker background facilitated his early exposure to progressive British dissenting writers such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who would become crucial influences, it left him outside the period’s Congregationalist and Presbyterian cultural elite and predisposed him to his lifelong stance of reasoned skepticism of utopian or perfectionist notions for political change. That is, Brown’s background and early years helped shape his career-long concern with the violent ideological controversies of the early republic, as well as his characteristic tendency to see both the destructive and productive aspects of the period’s far-reaching political upheavals....
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Bruce, John Edward (1856-1924), journalist and historian
David A. Canton
Bruce, John Edward (22 February 1856–07 August 1924), journalist and historian, was born in Piscataway, Maryland, the son of Martha Allen Clark and Robert Bruce, who were both enslaved Africans. In 1859 Major Harvey Griffin, Robert Bruce’s slaveholder, sold him to a Georgia slaveholder. Raised by his mother, Bruce lived in Maryland until 1861 when Union troops marching through Maryland freed him and his mother, taking them to Washington, D.C., where Bruce lived until 1892. In 1865 Bruce’s mother worked as a domestic in Stratford, Connecticut, where Bruce received his early education in an integrated school. One year later they returned to Washington, where Bruce continued his education. Although he did not complete high school, he enrolled in a course at Howard University in 1872. Bruce married Lucy Pinkwood, an opera singer from Washington, D.C. They had no children. In 1895 Bruce married Florence Adelaide Bishop, with whom he had one child....
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Burk, John Daly (1776?–?11 Apr. 1808), editor, historian, and dramatist
Sally L. Jones
Burk, John Daly (1776?–?11 Apr. 1808), editor, historian, and dramatist, was born in Ireland, arriving in America at the age of twenty. His parents’ names are unknown. He was a student at Trinity College in Dublin, but he was dismissed for “deism and republicanism” and eventually forced to leave Ireland, presumably because of political difficulties. Legend has it that a woman named Miss Daly gave him her female attire to help him escape from the British, hence the use of Daly in his name....
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Catton, Bruce (1899-1978), historian and editor
Thomas I. Crimando
Catton, Bruce (09 October 1899–28 August 1978), historian and editor, was born Charles Bruce Catton in Petoskey, Michigan, the son of George Robert Catton, a Congregational minister and educator, and Adella Maude Patten. As a youth, Catton lived in Benzonia, a small community in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. In a later interview, he remembered it as “about as small a small town as there ever was, and I think about as pleasant a place, in the last of the preautomobile age, for a child to grow up” ( ...
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Dabney, Virginius (1901-1995), journalist and historian
Peter Wallenstein
Dabney, Virginius (08 February 1901–28 December 1995), journalist and historian, was born in University (now Charlottesville), Virginia, the son of Richard Heath Dabney, a history professor, and Lily Heth Davis. Schooled at home until the age of thirteen, he then attended the prestigious Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. He earned a B.A. in 1902 and an M.A. in 1921 from the University of Virginia, taught French at Episcopal High School (1921–1922), and then began a long and accomplished career in journalism in Richmond, Virginia. He married Douglas Harrison Chelf in 1923; they had three children, and their marriage lasted until her death in 1994....
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Davis, Samuel Post (1850-1918), journalist, author, and historian
Lawrence I. Berkove
Davis, Samuel Post (04 April 1850–17 March 1918), journalist, author, and historian, was born in Branford, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend George R. Davis, an Episcopalian priest, and Sylvia Nichols. As Davis’s father accepted different pulpits, the family moved to Ansonia, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; and Racine, Wisconsin. In Racine, Samuel attended the Racine College private school but apparently did not complete the secondary curriculum. He accompanied his parents when they subsequently moved to Brownsville, Nebraska, then to Nevada City, California, and finally to Carson City, Nevada....
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Dexter, Henry Martyn (1821-1890), editor and historian
Henry Warner Bowden
Dexter, Henry Martyn (13 August 1821–13 November 1890), editor and historian, was born in Plympton, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Morton and Elijah Dexter, a clergyman. At the age of fifteen Dexter attended his father’s alma mater, Brown, but studied there for only a year. He transferred to Yale and, while acquiring enabling funds by teaching school every summer, graduated in 1840. For one full year he taught and served as principal of an academy in Rochester, Massachusetts, and in 1841 began theological studies at Andover Seminary. He graduated in 1844, received ordination shortly thereafter, and in the same year married Emeline Augusta Palmer. At the time of his marriage Dexter also took up his first ministerial responsibilities, serving as pastor of the newly organized Franklin Street Congregational Church in Manchester, New Hampshire. Five years later he moved to Boston, ministering there at the Pine Street Congregational Church (later Berkeley Temple) from 1849 to 1867....
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Fall, Bernard B. (1926-1967), war correspondent, historian, and educator
James Friguglietti
Fall, Bernard B. (19 November 1926–21 February 1967), war correspondent, historian, and educator, was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Leon Fall, a businessman, and Anna Seligman. After the German seizure of Austria in 1938, Bernard was taken to France. His parents perished during World War II—his father was executed by the Germans for resistance activity, and his mother was deported to Germany, where she disappeared. In November 1942, following the Nazi occupation of southern France, Fall joined the Resistance, fought in the Alps, and was twice wounded. During the Liberation, he enlisted in the French regular army and served for the duration of the war. He was later awarded the Medal of Liberated France for his valor....
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Freeman, Douglas Southall (1886-1953), newspaper editor and military historian
Peter Wallenstein
Freeman, Douglas Southall (16 May 1886–13 June 1953), newspaper editor and military historian, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Walker Burford Freeman, a general agent for the New York Life Insurance Company, and Bettie Allen Hamner. He was not yet six years old when the family moved to Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy and a center of Confederate memorials and gatherings. He earned a B.A. from Richmond College (now the University of Richmond) in 1904 and a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1908 at the age of twenty-two. Freeman never published his dissertation, on secession in Virginia, but he published an edited volume in 1908, ...
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Haynes, Williams (1886-1970), publisher, historian, and chemical economist
Robert M. Hawthorne
Haynes, Williams (29 July 1886–16 November 1970), publisher, historian, and chemical economist, was born Nathan Gallup Williams Haynes in Detroit, Michigan, the son of David Oliphant Haynes, owner and operator of a publishing company, and Helene Dunham Williams. He spent some time finding what he wanted to do with his life. After six months in his early twenties as a reporter for the ...
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Hildreth, Richard (1807-1865), journalist, antislavery activist, philosopher, and historian
Lynn Gordon Hughes
Hildreth, Richard (28 June 1807–11 July 1865), journalist, antislavery activist, philosopher, and historian, was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the son of Hosea Hildreth, a Congregational (later Unitarian) minister and educator, and Sarah McLeod Hildreth. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. After graduating from Harvard in 1826, he spent a year teaching school in Concord, Massachusetts. This experience inspired his earliest historical writing, ...
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Jameson, John Franklin (1859-1937), history professor and journal editor
Morey Rothberg
Jameson, John Franklin (19 September 1859–28 September 1937), history professor and journal editor, was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, the son of John Jameson, a schoolteacher, lawyer, and postmaster, and Mariette Thompson. Jameson attended public schools and later the Roxbury Latin School. He was admitted to Harvard University but moved with his family to attend Amherst College in 1875. He lived at home all four years and graduated in 1879 as class valedictorian. At Amherst, political science professor ...
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Josephson, Matthew (1899-1978)
In
Matthew Josephson Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-116726).
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Josephson, Matthew (1899-1978), writer
David E. Shi
Josephson, Matthew (15 February 1899–13 March 1978), writer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Julius Josephson, a banker, and Sarah Kasindorf. A child of Jewish immigrants from Romania and Russia, Josephson graduated from Columbia University in 1920. That same year he married Hannah Geffen, a nineteen-year-old reporter for the ...
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