Francis "Frank" McGregor was born to Peter McGregor and Christine Ross on June 19, 1838, in Nottinghamshire, England. He was one of ten children and lived with his grandparents in the northern part of Scotland until he was 13 years old. In 1850, he...
Fred S. Meady worked on steam and cargo ships and often spent months at sea or waiting in various ports for the ships to be loaded with cargo such as cotton, sugar, and coal. He often traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, but also made trips to...
John Alexander Wills was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on October 21, 1819. In 1848 he married Charlotte Le Moyne; the couple had two children, William Le Moyne Wills and Madeline Francis Wills. Will was an aggressive opponent of slavery, joining...
Moses Ayers McCoid was born to Robert McCoid and Jean Bain McCoid near Bellefontaine, Ohio, November 5, 1840. He attended Fairfield University, Iowa and Washington College (now Washington and Jefferson College) in Washington, Pennsylvania. He...
Olive May Graves Percival was born July 1, 1869, near Sheffield, Illinois; moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother and sisters, 1887; worked as an insurance clerk in Los Angeles; an avid collector, Percival amassed ten thousand books as...
Langston Hughes, well-known African-American author of Weary Blues (1926), The Big Sea (1940), and other works. Loren Miller was an African-American judge, attorney, and Civil Rights activist. He was a reporter for the California News and publisher...
Georgia Willis Read, historian and author, was the daughter of Dr. George Willis Read, who led a company across the plains in 1850 to California. Georgia attended Smith College and served with the Smith College Relief Unit in France during World...
Anna Clegg Stryke was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 14, 1884. Stryke graduated from Cornell University, where she was a member of the Sigma Xi organization for scientific research. She was elected to the faculty after her...
Robert Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 15, 1935 to Michael and Helen Silverberg. He was an only child. At an early age Silverberg began writing and by the time he entered his teenage years he was submitting stories to science...
Henry Cabot Lodge, American statesman, Republican political leader, author and historian; he was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1850, a member of the influential New England Lodge and Cabot families. Lodge attended Harvard College,...
Edward Bunker, Jr. was born in Garden Grove, Iowa. The oldest of thirteen children, his parents were Edward Bunker, Sr. and Emily Abbott. His father became a Mormon in April of 1845 and Edward Bunker, Jr. followed his father into the Mormon...
Jack Clifford Smith, born August 27, 1916, in Long Beach, Calif., was a journalist and author who began his career in Bakersfield in 1937; he served in the USMC, 1944-1945. Smith was a reporter for several newspapers before coming to the Los...
The Wiley Gold Mining Company was incorporated in 1905 and its mining claims were primarily in Lida, Nevada. Dr. James Thompson, the company's secretary, was based in Kansas City, Missouri, and he was responsible for a great deal of the company's...
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), was born in London but lived a significant portion of his adult life in Italy. He was an artist who did work for John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. Murray is sometimes...
Burke Eugene Casari, a resident of Lincoln, Nebraska, worked as an administrator for environmental programs at the State Health Department. He became interested in Richard Burton in 1962, while teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Casari has...
Paul Conrad served as chief editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times from 1964 to 1993. His career began at the Denver Post in 1950 where he drew until moving to the Los Angeles Times. Conrad won three Pulitzer Prizes (1964, 1971 and 1984)...
William Ewart Gladstone, prime minister and author, was born in Liverpool, on Dec. 29, 1809; the fifth child and youngest son of Sir John Gladstone and Anne Mackenzie Gladstone. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, in preparation for...
William Norton left Massachusetts for California in 1849 on the ship "Argonaut." He first settled in Maxwell's Creek (also called Coulterville), Mariposa County, and later moved to Big Oak Flat, Tuolumne County. Norton returned to Massachusetts in...
Terry Dunstan Thompson was born in New London, Conn., Aug. 30, 1918, the only son of Terry B. Thompson, a Naval officer, and Virginia Leita Thompson. Raised in a devout Catholic family, Thompson was educated at a variety of Catholic schools before...