Creighton W. Abrams [left to right] President Lyndon Johnson and Creighton W. Abrams (1968) at a White House briefing on the war in Vietnam, 1968. Courtesy of the National Archives (NWDNS-306-PSA-68[3528]).
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Abrams, Creighton Williams, Jr. (15 September 1914–04 September 1974)
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Abrams, Creighton Williams, Jr. (15 September 1914–04 September 1974), army officer
George C. Herring
Abrams, Creighton Williams, Jr. (15 September 1914–04 September 1974), army officer, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Creighton W. Abrams, a railway repairman, and Nellie Randall. At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Abrams excelled in horsemanship, played football, and attained a mediocre academic record, finishing 185th in a class of 276. He graduated in 1936 and was commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry. That same year he married Julia Harvey, with whom he would have six children....
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Adams, Charles (1845-1895), soldier and diplomat
Kathryn D. Snavely
Adams, Charles (19 December 1845–19 August 1895), soldier and diplomat, was born Karl Adam Schwanbeck in Anclam, Pomerania, Germany, the son of Karl Heinrich Schwanbeck, a cabinetmaker, and Maria J. Markman. Adams was educated at the Gymnasium in Anclam and graduated with very high marks, especially in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Soon after his graduation in 1862, he moved to the United States. He had not been in the New World long before he enlisted in the Union army, serving in the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment. He fought in the Civil War for the remainder of the conflict and was wounded two times....
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Allen, Henry Tureman (1859-1930), soldier
Edward A. Goedeken
Allen, Henry Tureman (13 April 1859–30 August 1930), soldier, was born at Sharpsburg, Kentucky, the son of Ruben Sanford Allen, a businessman, and Susannah Shumate. After a year at an academy in Georgetown, Kentucky, Allen was accepted at West Point, which he attended between 1878 and 1882. Commissioned a second lieutenant, the young officer posted at Fort Keogh in Montana Territory. In September 1884 he became aide-de-camp to General ...
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Almond, Edward Mallory (12 December 1892–11 June 1979)
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Edward Almond [left to right] Courtney Whitney, General Douglas MacArthur, and General Edward Almond, observing the shelling of Inchon from a U.S. Navy ship, 1950. Courtesy of the National Archives (NWDNS-111-SC-348438).
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Almond, Edward Mallory (12 December 1892–11 June 1979), army general, nicknamed Ned
James I. Matray
Almond, Edward Mallory (12 December 1892–11 June 1979), army general, nicknamed Ned, was born in Luray, Virginia, the son of Walter Coles Almond, a farm implement salesman, and Grace Popham. Almond earned a bachelor of science degree at Virginia Military Institute, graduating third in the class of 1915. The next year, he received his commission as a U.S. Army second lieutenant and then graduated from Fort Leavenworth Army Service School in March 1917. When the United States declared war on Germany, Almond was with the Fourth Infantry Division, commanding a machine gun company. Seven months before leaving for France, he married Margaret Crook on 4 August 1917; the couple would have two children. Almond, now a captain, commanded the Twelfth Machine Gun Battalion in the Aisne-Marne and Meuse-Argonne campaigns, sustaining a shrapnel wound at the Vesle River and receiving a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. In July 1919 he left occupation duty with the Fourth Infantry in Germany to become a professor of military science and tactics at Marion Institute in Alabama....
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Andrews, Frank Maxwell (1884-1943)
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Frank M. Andrews. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-94369).
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Andrews, Frank Maxwell (1884-1943), army officer and airman
John C. Fredriksen
Andrews, Frank Maxwell (03 February 1884–03 May 1943), army officer and airman, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of James David Andrews, a newspaper reporter, and Louise Adeline Maxwell. He graduated from the Montgomery Bell Academy in 1901 and the following year gained admittance to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Graduating in 1906, Andrews was commissioned a second lieutenant in the cavalry. He spent the next eleven years drawing routine assignments in the American West, Hawaii, and the Philippines. In 1914 he married Jeanette Allen, the daughter of Major General ...
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Atkinson, Henry (1782-1842), army officer
Roger L. Nichols
Atkinson, Henry (1782–14 June 1842), army officer, was born in Person County, North Carolina, the son of John Atkinson, a plantation owner and local politician. Nothing is known of his mother, who died shortly after his birth. Little is known of his youth or education, but as the youngest child in a reasonably wealthy family he presumably received whatever education was available. While a young man he worked on the family plantation. Then on 1 July 1808 he received an appointment in the newly enlarged U.S. Army. For the rest of his life he remained on active duty serving on the Gulf Coast, on the Canadian border in New York, and as far west as Montana....
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Bacon, Robert (1860-1919), banker, diplomat, and soldier
Calvin D. Davis
Bacon, Robert (05 July 1860–29 May 1919), banker, diplomat, and soldier, was born in Jamaica Plain near Boston, Massachusetts, the son of William Benjamin Bacon and Emily Crosby Low. Raised in an old Massachusetts family long prominent in business, he was educated at Hopkinson’s School and at Harvard, graduating in 1880. Although his intellectual abilities were considerable, he won attention for his athletic ability, personality, and good looks, as he would throughout life. After graduation he traveled around the world, then joined the banking firm of Lee, Higginson, and Company. In 1883 he became a member of E. Rollins Morse and Brother. That year he married Martha Waldron Cowdin; they were the parents of three sons and a daughter....
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Barnitz, Albert Trorillo Siders (1835-1912), poet and soldier
Robert M. Utley
Barnitz, Albert Trorillo Siders (10 March 1835–18 July 1912), poet and soldier, was born at Bloody Run, Bedford County, Pennsylvania. The names of his parents are not known. His father, a physician, died when Albert was thirteen, and the boy devoted himself to caring for his mother and siblings. Reading widely and deeply in literature, he became a self-taught poet of modest local reputation. His formal education consisted of a year at Kenyon College in 1851 and two years, 1858 to 1859, of intermittent study at the Cleveland Law College. His first marriage, to Eva Prouty in 1859, ended with her death in childbirth a year later....
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Beightler, Robert S. (1892-1978), soldier
John Kennedy Ohl
Beightler, Robert S. (21 March 1892–12 February 1978), soldier, was born Robert Sprague Beightler in Marysville, Ohio, the son of William P. Beightler, a surveyor and executive with a cigar company, and Joana Sprague Beightler. He graduated from Marysville High School and attended Ohio State University for two years before leaving in 1911 to become an engineer for Union County, Ohio. In 1914 he married Anna Lawrence Porter; they would have two children and divorce in 1933....
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Bell, James Franklin (1856-1919), army officer
Edgar F. Raines
Bell, James Franklin (09 January 1856–08 January 1919), army officer, was born near Shelbyville, Kentucky, the son of John Wilson Bell, a dairy farmer, and Sarah Margaret Venable Allen. Bell matriculated at the U.S. Military Academy in September 1874 and graduated in June 1878, standing thirty-eighth in a class of forty-three members. He served as a company officer in the Seventh Cavalry on the northern Great Plains from 1878 to 1886 and spent three years as a professor of military science and tactics at Southern Illinois Normal University at Carbondale, Illinois. He became involved in a number of service reforms, including marksmanship training and physical conditioning, and he was one of the first American officers to use a sand table to teach his men tactics. In 1881 he wed Sarah Buford. The Bells had no children....
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Bendire, Charles Emil (1836-1897)
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Charles Bendire. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-94579).
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Bendire, Charles Emil (1836-1897), naturalist and soldier
Michael J. Brodhead
Bendire, Charles Emil (27 April 1836–04 February 1897), naturalist and soldier, was born Karl Emil Bender at König im Odenwald in Hesse-Darmstadt (now in Germany). The identities of his parents are not known. At age twelve he began his studies at a theological seminary in Passy, France. Misconduct led to his departure five years later. In 1853 he immigrated to the United States and anglicized his name to Charles Bendire. The following year he joined the First Dragoons in the U.S. Army. During his second enlistment, which began in 1860, he became a sergeant and later hospital steward in the Fourth Cavalry....
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Bennett, John Charles (1923-1980), major general in the U.S. Army and White House aide
Michael A. Genovese
Bennett, John Charles (06 December 1923–05 May 1980), major general in the U.S. Army and White House aide, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Ivan Loveridge and Ruby Jenrette. Shortly after graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1945, Bennett married Jean Hazelton MacKenzie. They had four children. In 1951 Bennett received an M.A. in English from Columbia University. He received another M.A. in international affairs from George Washington University in 1964....
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Billings, John Shaw (1838-1913)
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John Shaw Billings. Courtesy of the Clendening History of Medicine Library and Museum, University of Kansas Medical Center.
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Billings, John Shaw (1838-1913), army medical officer, library organizer, and public health activist
James H. Cassedy
Billings, John Shaw (12 April 1838–11 March 1913), army medical officer, library organizer, and public health activist, was born near Allensville, Indiana, the son of James Billings, a farmer and storekeeper, and Abby Shaw. Despite spotty secondary schooling, he ultimately went to Miami College (Ohio), where he earned his B.A. in 1857. He was awarded the M.D. by the Medical College of Ohio in 1860. Billings remained with the latter institution for a year as an anatomical demonstrator, but after the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the U.S. Army as a contract surgeon. In 1862 he was commissioned first lieutenant and assistant surgeon and went on to make army service his career. Also in 1862 he married Katharine Mary Stevens; they had five children....
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Blanchfield, Florence Aby (1884-1971), nurse and army officer
Connie L. Reeves
Blanchfield, Florence Aby (01 April 1884–12 May 1971), nurse and army officer, was born in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the daughter of Joseph Plunkett Blanchfield, a stonemason and cutter, and Mary Louvenia Anderson, a nurse. In 1903 Blanchfield entered South Side Hospital Training School for Nurses in Pittsburgh, graduating in 1906. During postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Dr. ...
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Bliss, Tasker Howard (1853-1930), soldier, scholar, and diplomat
Edward A. Goedeken
Bliss, Tasker Howard (31 December 1853–09 November 1930), soldier, scholar, and diplomat, was born in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of George Ripley Bliss, a Baptist clergyman and professor at Lewisburg Academy (now Bucknell University), and Mary Ann Raymond. After attending Lewisburg Academy for two years, Tasker Bliss was admitted to West Point, where he excelled in foreign languages and finished eighth in his class in 1875. After graduating, he was assigned to the First Artillery in Savannah, Georgia. The next year he returned to West Point for a four-year tour as an instructor in modern languages. His grasp of other tongues included not only his beloved Greek, which he studied relentlessly, but also Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. The Custer massacre in 1876 prompted him to request active duty at a frontier post, but Major General ...
