Carpenter, Frank George (08 May 1855–18 June 1924), journalist and author of travel books, was born in Mansfield, Ohio, the son of George F. Carpenter, an attorney, and Jeannette Reid. Frank attended public school in Mansfield and then went on to the University of Wooster, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key and graduating in 1877. He did further study at Ohio State University. In 1878 or 1879 he was hired as the Columbus (Ohio) correspondent for the ...
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Carpenter, Frank George (1855-1924), journalist and author of travel books
Betty Burnett
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Carpenter, Frank George (1855-1924)
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Frank Carpenter. Center, talking with the director of the Standard Oil fields in Roumania. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-98528).
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Colton, Walter (1797-1851), clergyman, journalist, and author
Robert L. Gale
Colton, Walter (09 May 1797–22 January 1851), clergyman, journalist, and author, was born in Rutland County, Vermont, the son of Walter Colton, a weaver, and Thankful Cobb. The family soon moved to Georgia, Vermont. Colton was apprenticed to a cabinetmaking uncle in Hartford, Connecticut, where in 1816 he joined the Congregational church. He attended classes at the Hartford Grammar School until 1818, entered Yale College, won a prize for excellence in Latin, and graduated as valedictorian poet in 1822. He studied at the Andover Theological Seminary, graduating in 1825. Later that year he became a Congregationalist evangelist and joined the faculty of the Scientific and Military Academy in Middletown, Connecticut, where he taught moral philosophy and belles-lettres and was chaplain. Publishing essays and poems signed “Bertram” in the Middletown ...
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Dos Passos, John (14 January 1896–28 September 1970), writer
Linda Wagner-Martin
Dos Passos, John (14 January 1896–28 September 1970), writer, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of John Randolph Dos Passos, a lawyer, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison. His parents were married in 1910, when his father’s first wife died, and in 1912 the boy took his father’s name of Dos Passos; before that he was known as John Roderigo Madison. As an illegitimate child he had lived a rootless life, traveling much in Europe with his mother. She died in 1915. The necessary secrecy of his boyhood, the mixture of admiration and fear Dos Passos felt toward his powerful father—who was both an important corporate lawyer and the author of books on trusts and the stock market—and his dependence on his beautiful, often unhappy southern mother affected him deeply. A timid boy, Dos Passos found excitement in reading, studying languages, and observing the art of the time; he discovered his greatest joy in writing. His early poems, with those of ...
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Dos Passos, John (14 January 1896–28 September 1970)
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John Dos Passos. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-117477).
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Hoffman, Charles Fenno (1806-1884), writer and editor
Steven Fink
Hoffman, Charles Fenno (07 February 1806–07 June 1884), writer and editor, was born in New York City, the son of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, a prominent judge, and his second wife, Maria Fenno. At the age of eleven, Hoffman was seriously injured in an accident along the New York docks, resulting in the amputation of his right leg above the knee. In spite of the accident, he was an avid athlete and outdoorsman. In 1821 he entered Columbia College, where he was active in student life but never rose above the bottom fifth of his class. He left Columbia after two years, and in 1823 he began to study law in the Albany office of Harmanus Bleeker. Admitted to the bar in 1827, he returned to New York and began to practice law. Soon after, he began contributing essays, reviews, and poems to the ...
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Hoffman, Charles Fenno (1806-1884)
Maker: John Sartain
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Charles Fenno Hoffman. Engraving by John Sartain. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-99504).
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Martineau, Harriet (1802-1876), author
Valerie Kossew Dunn
Martineau, Harriet (12 June 1802–27 June 1876), author, was born in Norwich, England, the daughter of Thomas Martineau, a textile manufacturer, and Elizabeth Rankin. The family was Unitarian, republican, and laissez-fairist, and these traditions shaped both Harriet’s early thinking and her implicit belief in natural law and the rights of the individual. Although her education was inferior to that given her brothers, it was more rigorous than was customary for girls of the period. In adolescence she developed a hearing disorder that left her permanently hard of hearing, but, despite this disability and her inferior status as a woman in the nineteenth century, she made her living as a writer and earned an international reputation doing so....
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Morford, Henry (1823-1881), author and journalist
Daniel Webster Hollis
Morford, Henry (10 March 1823–04 August 1881), author and journalist, was born in the village of New Monmouth, Monmouth County, New Jersey, the son of William Morford, a merchant, and Elizabeth Willett. The Morford family had emigrated from England to New Jersey, where they engaged in farming as well as mercantile, coal, and lumber businesses. The Morfords were devout Baptists, and they were politically active as Whigs and, later, Republicans....
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Regan, John (1818-1893), newspaper editor and author
John E. Hallwas
Regan, John (1818–05 May 1893), newspaper editor and author, was apparently born in northern England, near the Lune River, of Irish parents. He attended school in Ayrshire, Scotland, and later taught there for a few years. Early in 1842 he married a woman named Elizabeth (last name unknown) and sailed for the United States. They eventually had four children....
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Royall, Anne Newport (1769-1854), travel writer and journalist
Jeanne M. Malloy
Royall, Anne Newport (11 June 1769–01 October 1854), travel writer and journalist, was born near Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of William Newport and Mary (maiden name unknown). The Newports moved to the Pennsylvania frontier in 1772 and by 1775 were living near Hanna’s Town, the Westmoreland County seat, after which time William Newport disappears from the records. Anne learned to read at an early age from her father and briefly attended school in a log cabin. After the death of her mother’s second husband (c. 1782), she moved with her mother and her half brother to Middle River, Virginia. In 1787 she and her mother became domestics for William Royall of Sweet Springs Mountain, now in West Virginia....
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Sheean, Vincent (05 December 1899–15 March 1975), journalist and author
Robert L. Gale
Sheean, Vincent (05 December 1899–15 March 1975), journalist and author, was born James Vincent Sheean in Pana, Illinois, the son of William Charles Sheean and Susan MacDermot; he was nicknamed Jimmy. After high school in Pana, he attended the University of Chicago from 1916 to 1920, taking courses in English literature, Romance languages, history, and philosophy, and worked on the school newspaper. When his mother died in 1921, he lacked funds to continue at the university and, without a degree, moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where he became a reporter for the ...
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Sheean, Vincent (05 December 1899–15 March 1975)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
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Vincent Sheean. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1958. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-103676).
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Thompson, Era Bell (1906-1986), author and editor
Gerald G. Newborg
Thompson, Era Bell (10 August 1906–30 December 1986), author and editor, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Stewart C. Thompson and Mary Logan. In 1914 she moved with her family to Driscoll, North Dakota, where her father was a farmer and, from 1917 to 1921, a private messenger for Governor ...
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Warner, Charles Dudley (1829-1900), author and editor
Robert L. Gale
Warner, Charles Dudley (12 September 1829–20 October 1900), author and editor, was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, the son of Justus Warner and Sylvia Hitchcock, farmers. In 1837, three years after her husband died, Sylvia Warner took her two sons to a guardian in Charlemont, Massachusetts, and, in 1841, on to her brother in Cazenovia, New York. Warner attended classes at the Oneida Conference Seminary in Cazenovia, enrolled at Hamilton College, and graduated in 1851 with a B.A. While still a student he published articles in the ...
