Adamski, George (17 April 1891–23 April 1965), lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s' flying saucer enthusiasm, lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s’ flying saucer enthusiasm, was born in Poland. His parents (names unknown) brought him to the United States when he was one or two. The family settled in Dunkirk, New York; their life was hard, and Adamski received little formal education. He joined the Thirteenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment in 1913 as an enlisted man, serving on the Mexican border, and was honorably discharged in 1916. On 25 December 1917 he married Mary A. Shimbersky (d. 1954). After leaving the army, Adamski worked as a painter in Yellowstone National Park, in a flour mill in Portland, Oregon, and by 1921 was working in a cement factory in California. He continued to live in California, reportedly supporting himself and his wife through a variety of jobs, including by the 1930s teaching and lecturing on occult subjects....
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Adamski, George (17 April 1891–23 April 1965), lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s' flying saucer enthusiasm
Robert S. Ellwood
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Avery, Martha Gallison Moore (1851-1929), lecturer and lay Catholic preacher
Connie L. Phelps
Avery, Martha Gallison Moore (06 April 1851–08 August 1929), lecturer and lay Catholic preacher, was born in Steuben, Maine, the daughter of Albion King Paris Moore, a house builder, and Katharine Leighton. She was educated in the village public school and then in a private dame school. When Martha was thirteen years old her mother died and she went to live with her grandfather, Samuel Moore, who was active in local and state politics. This atmosphere may have contributed to Martha’s future political interest. As a young woman she carried on a millinery business in Ellsworth, Maine, where she joined a Unitarian congregation. It was there that she met Millard Avery, a fellow church member. They were married in March 1880; they had one daughter. In 1888 Avery and her daughter moved to Boston to be closer to her husband, who was working as a traveling salesman. That year she joined the newly organized First Nationalist Club of Boston and wrote articles for its publication, ...
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Bacon, Alice Mabel (1858-1918), writer, educator, and lecturer
Claire Strom
Bacon, Alice Mabel (06 February 1858–01 May 1918), writer, educator, and lecturer, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Leonard Bacon, a minister, and Catherine Terry. Her father served as the pastor of the Center Church in New Haven for nearly sixty years; he was also a teacher at Yale University and a local civic leader. Bacon was educated at private schools in New Haven and later took the Harvard “examinations for women” in 1880 and 1881....
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Bangs, John Kendrick (1862-1922), humorist, editor, and lecturer
Richard Bleiler
Bangs, John Kendrick (27 May 1862–21 January 1922), humorist, editor, and lecturer, was born in Yonkers, New York, the son of Francis Nehemiah Bangs, a lawyer, and Frances Amelia Bull, and the grandson of Nathan Bangs, a Methodist clergyman. His ancestors were domineering and ferocious personalities whose achievements overshadowed Bangs’s career, and his perennial reluctance to take either religion or law seriously can be seen as a mild rebellion....
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Banning, Margaret Culkin (1891-1982), writer
Ann T. Keene
Banning, Margaret Culkin (18 March 1891–04 January 1982), writer, was born in Buffalo, Minnesota, the daughter of William Edgar Culkin, a Duluth newspaper executive, and Hannah Alice Young. She attended Vassar College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated in 1912. Pursuing an interest in social work, she attended Russell Sage College on a fellowship in 1912–1913, then spent the following academic year at the Chicago School of Philanthropy, which awarded her a certificate in 1914 for completion of its program. That same year she married a Duluth lawyer, Archibald T. Banning, Jr. The couple, who were divorced in 1934, had four children, two of whom survived into adulthood....
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Beard, Frank (06 February 1842–28 September 1905), originator of "Chalk Talks" popular lectures illustrated with rapid chalk drawings
Thelma S. Rohrer
Beard, Frank (06 February 1842–28 September 1905), originator of "Chalk Talks" popular lectures illustrated with rapid chalk drawings, originator of “Chalk Talks,” popular lectures illustrated with rapid chalk drawings, was born Thomas Francis Beard in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of James Henry Beard...
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Bell, Daniel (10 May 1919–25 January 2011), sociologist and public intellectual
Howard Brick
Bell, Daniel (10 May 1919–25 January 2011), sociologist and public intellectual, was born Daniel Bolotsky in New York City, son of Benjamin Bolotsky and Anna Kaplan, immigrant Jewish garment workers living on the Lower East Side. His father died when Daniel was an infant; around ...
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Bell, James Madison (1826-1902), abolitionist, poet, and lecturer
Mamie E. Locke
Bell, James Madison (03 April 1826–1902), abolitionist, poet, and lecturer, was born in Gallipolis, Ohio. His parents’ identities are unknown. At age sixteen, in 1842, he moved to Cincinnati. While there, in 1848, he married Louisiana Sanderlin (or Sanderline), with whom he had several children, and also learned the plastering trade from his brother-in-law George Knight. Bell worked as a plasterer during the day and attended Cincinnati High School for Colored People at night. Founded in 1844 by Reverend Hiram S. Gilmore, the school had a connection to Oberlin College and was said to have given impetus to the sentiment found in ...
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Bernard, Jessie Shirley (8 Jun. 1903–6 Oct. 1996), sociologist and feminist scholar
Amanda E. Strauss
Bernard, Jessie Shirley (8 Jun. 1903–6 Oct. 1996), sociologist and feminist scholar, was born Jessie Sarah (later changed to Shirley) Ravitch in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the third of four children born to Bessie Kanter and David Solomon Ravitch who had emigrated separately to the United States from Transylvania (later Romania) in the 1880s. The Ravitchs, the only Jewish family living in their suburban, middle-class neighborhood, were treated as interlopers. This experience proved formative for Jessie and influenced her early scholarship....
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Bibb, Henry Walton (1815-1854), author, editor, and antislavery lecturer
Gregory S. Jackson
Bibb, Henry Walton (10 May 1815–1854), author, editor, and antislavery lecturer, was born into slavery on the plantation of David White of Shelby County, Kentucky, the son of James Bibb, a slaveholding planter and state senator, and Mildred Jackson. White began hiring Bibb out as a laborer on several neighboring plantations before the age of ten. The constant change in living situations throughout his childhood, combined with the inhumane treatment he often received at the hands of strangers, set a pattern for life that he would later refer to in his autobiography as “my manner of living on the road.” Bibb was sold more than six times between 1832 and 1840 and was forced to relocate to at least seven states throughout the South; later, as a free man, his campaign for abolition took him throughout eastern Canada and the northern United States. But such early instability also made the young Bibb both self-sufficient and resourceful, two characteristics that were useful against the day-to-day assault of slavery: “The only weapon of self defense that I could use successfully,” he wrote, “was that of deception.”...
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Bibb, Henry Walton (1815-1854)
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Blashfield, Edwin Howland (1848-1936), artist, writer, and lecturer
Eric Van Schaack
Blashfield, Edwin Howland (15 December 1848–12 October 1936), artist, writer, and lecturer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of William Henry Blashfield, who was in the wholesale dry goods business, and Eliza Dodd, an amateur watercolorist. After some schooling in Hartford, Connecticut, he attended the Boston Latin School, and in 1863 he went to Hanover, Germany, where he intended to study engineering. However, three months later he was forced to return to the United States, where he enrolled in the Boston Institute of Technology (later Massachusetts Institute of Technology)....
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Bormann, Ernest Gordon (28 July 1925–27 Dec. 2008), professor of speech communication
Julian Thomas Costa
Bormann, Ernest Gordon (28 July 1925–27 Dec. 2008), professor of speech communication, was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, one of three children of Ernest Gottlieb Bormann, a banker, and Annette (Doering) Bormann. After graduating from Stickney High School in 1943, Bormann enrolled at the University of South Dakota, although he quickly put his studies on hold to serve in the United States Army. For the last two years of World War II, Bormann served in the European Theater of Operations as a combat engineer. After the war, he returned to South Dakota and became an active member of the University of South Dakota’s forensics program, as well as the Alpha Tao Omega leadership fraternity. He earned a BA degree, majoring in speech, in ...
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Brown, Hallie Quinn (10 March 1849–16 September 1949), educator, elocutionist, and entertainer
Claire Strom
Brown, Hallie Quinn (10 March 1849–16 September 1949), educator, elocutionist, and entertainer, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Thomas Arthur Brown, a steward and express agent on riverboats, and Frances Jane Scroggins. Both her parents were formerly enslaved. When Hallie was fourteen years old, she moved with her parents and five siblings to Chatham, Ontario, where her father earned his living farming, and the children attended the local school. There Brown’s talents as a speaker became evident. Returning to the United States around 1870, the family settled in Wilberforce, Ohio, so that Hallie and her younger brother could attend Wilberforce College, a primarily Black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) institution....
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Brown, Hallie Quinn (10 March 1849–16 September 1949)
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Brown, John (1810?–1876), field hand and author
F. N. Boney
Brown, John (1810?–1876), field hand and author, was born in Southampton County, Virginia, the son of slaves Joe and Nancy. For most of his life as a slave he was called Fed or Benford. At around age ten he and his mother were moved to nearby Northampton County, North Carolina; eighteen months later he was sold alone and sent to Georgia, never again to see any of his kinfolk....
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Brown, John Mason, Jr. (1900-1969), critic, author, and lecturer
Daniel S. Krempel
Brown, John Mason, Jr. (03 July 1900–16 March 1969), critic, author, and lecturer, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of John Mason Brown, a lawyer, and Caroline Carroll Ferguson; they divorced when Brown was two. John and his older sister were brought up by their mother and maternal grandmother. Brown became stagestruck at the age of eight, when he saw the aging ...
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Brown, William Wells (1814?–06 November 1884), author and reformer
R. J. M. Blackett
Brown, William Wells (1814?–06 November 1884), author and reformer, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, the son of George Higgins, a relative of his master, and Elizabeth, a slave. Dr. John Young, Brown’s master, migrated with his family from Kentucky to the Missouri Territory in 1816. Eleven years later the Youngs moved to St. Louis. Although Brown never experienced the hardship of plantation slavery, he was hired out regularly and separated from his family. He worked for a while in the printing office of abolitionist ...
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Burleigh, Charles Calistus (1810-1878), antislavery lecturer and reformer
William Cohen
Burleigh, Charles Calistus (03 November 1810–13 June 1878), antislavery lecturer and reformer, was born in Plainfield, Connecticut, the son of Rinaldo Burleigh, a farmer and educator, and Lydia Bradford. Burleigh came from a family that was passionately committed to antislavery and other moral reforms. His father was the first president of the Windham County Antislavery Society, his sister taught at ...
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Burnett, Alfred (1824-1884), entertainer and journalist
Kent Neely and Steve West
Burnett, Alfred (02 November 1824–04 April 1884), entertainer and journalist, was born in Bungay, Suffolk, England. The names of his parents and other facts about his early life are unknown. In 1828 he was sent to live with an aunt in New York City. After four years of schooling in Utica, New York, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1836. He later became proprietor of a confectionery business and by 1860 owned three such establishments....
