Family Tree Tuesday

Oliver Winchester was an American businessman and politician. He was known for manufacturing and marketing the Winchester repeating rifle. He discovered that a division of Smith & Wesson firearms was failing financially with one of their newly patented arms during the time he was a clothing manufacturer. Winchester took the opportunity and acquired the Smith & Wesson division (known as the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company) with other stockholders in 1850. The name of the company… Read the full story

Lucy Stone was an orator, abolitionist and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. She helped initiate the first National Women’s Rights Convention, she assisted in establishing the Woman’s National Loyal League to help pass the Thirteenth Amendment, and she then helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association. Stone influenced Susan B. Anthony to take up the cause of women’s suffrage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that “Lucy Stone was the first person… Read the full story

Jacob Perkins was an American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. He is known to have been the father of the refrigerator. He is credited with the first patent for the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle titled “Apparatus and means for producing ice, and in cooling fluids” assigned on August 14, 1835.  He had 21 American patents and 19 English patents. Perkins had created machines for cutting and heading nails at the age of 24 in 1790 and… Read the full story

Charles G. Dawes was the 30th Vice President of the United States from 1925-1929. He was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925 for his work on the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations. He served in World War I, was the Comptroller of the Currency, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, and later the Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Charles Gates Dawes was born on August 27, 1865… Read the full story

Percival Lowell was an author, mathematician, and astronomer. He is known for having fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars. Lowell formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto fourteen years after his death, the name Pluto and its symbol were partly influenced by his initials “PL.” He graduated from Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics and at his graduation he gave a speech which was considered… Read the full story

Henry Brooks Adams was a journalist and was keen on exposing political corruption. He was appointed Professor of Medieval History at Harvard in 1870 and is considered to have been the first to conduct historical seminar work in the United States. One of his students was Henry Cabot Lodge, who worked closely with Adams as a graduate student.  Adams wrote two novels, he is credited as the author of Democracy, which was published anonymously in 1880… Read the full story

John Davis Lodge was an American actor turned politician, he was 79th Governor of Connecticut from 1951 to 1955, and U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Argentina and Switzerland. He graduated from Harvard University in 1925 and Harvard Law School in 1929. After a brief career as a lawyer, Lodge worked as an actor on screen and stage from 1933 to 1942. He appeared in movies such as Little Women, The Little Colonel in which he played Shirley Temple‘s… Read the full story

John Maynard Keynes was a British economist and is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern macroeconomics and the most influential economist of the 20th century. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention was necessary to moderate “boom and bust” cycles of economic activity. Criticisms of Keynes’s ideas had begun to gain significant acceptance by the early 1970s as… Read the full story

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich was a British statesman ho succeeded his grandfather, Edward Montagu, 3rd Earl of Sandwich, as the Earl of Sandwich in 1729, at the age of ten. He was Postmaster General, First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State for the Northern Department. He is best known for the claim that he was the inventor of the sandwich. John Montagu was born on November 13, 1718 to Edward Montagu,… Read the full story

General George Smith Patton, Jr. was best known for his command in the European Theater of World War II of the Seventh United States Army, and later the Third United States Army. He had participated in the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and was instrumental in designing the Model 1913 Cavalry Saber referred to as the “Patton Saber”. In between World War I and World War II, Patton remained a central figure in the development of armored… Read the full story

Known as the father of photojournalism, Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor was the first full-time editor of National Geographic Magazine having served from 1899-1954. He is credited with having built the magazine into the publication that it is today. Grosvenor was also president of  the National Geographic Society  from 1920-1954 and made it into one of the world’s largest and best known science and learning organizations through its magazine of ambitious natural and cultural explorations around the world…. Read the full story

Charles A. Pillsbury was the founder and namesake of the Pillsbury Company and was a flour industrialist. He was a flour miller in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pillsbury was a Minnesota State Senator from 1877-1897 and held the chairmanship of the Finance Committee of the Senate. Charles Alfred Pillsbury was born on December 3, 1842 in Warner, New Hampshire to George Alfred Pillsbury and Margaret Sprague Carleton. Pillsbury married Mary Ann Stinson who was the daughter of… Read the full story

William Drew Washburn was an American politician and founded the Pillsbury-Washburn Milling Company, which later became the Pillsbury Company. He served in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He was born on January 14, 1831 in Livermore, Maine to Israel Washburn and Martha Benjamin. He made a large fortune from his business ventures in lumber and flour milling, and by the 1880s he was among the wealthiest men in… Read the full story

Lydia Field Emmet was best known for her work as a portraitist. Her paintings can be found hanging in the White House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other prestigious art galleries. In 1883, at the age of sixteen, she was commissioned to illustrate Henrietta Christian Wright’s children’s book Little Folk in Green. Emmet was an illustrator for Harper’s Bazaar magazine and was commissioned to paint an official portrait of the First Lady, Lou Henry… Read the full story

Francis Preston Blair, Sr. was an American journalist and politician. He was made editor of the Washington Globe in 1830 which was the recognized organ of the Andrew Jackson party. Blair was a member of Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” that gave him a powerful influence. The Globe was the administration organ until 1841 and the chief Democratic organ until 1845. In 1849, Blair ceased to be its editor.  He was convinced after the Mexican War that slavery should not… Read the full story

John Huston was a film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote screenplays and directed films which are considered classics such as The Maltese Falcon (1941),  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Most of Huston’s films were adaptions of novels that often depicted a “heroic quest” as in Moby Dick or The Red Badge of Courage. John Huston was born… Read the full story

Samuel Morse was an inventor, contributing to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs and he was a co-inventor of the Morse code. He was also an accomplished painter. Morse had gone to England for three years to perfect his painting techniques and by the end of 1811 he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. After observing and practicing life drawing and absorbing its anatomical demands at the academy he produced his masterpiece, Dying… Read the full story

William S. Burroughs, Jr. was an American novelist who wrote three novels, two of which were published as Speed in 1970 and Kentucky Ham in 1973. Prakriti Junction, his third novel that he began in 1977 was never completed, although extracts from it were included in his third published work Cursed From Birth. He appears briefly in the 1983 documentary Burroughs, about his father, in which he discusses his childhood, his liver problems, and his relationship with his… Read the full story

Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist. He published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as “Spaceship Earth”, ephemeralization, and synergetic. He developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, including widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres. He was the second president of Mensa from 1974-1983. He was born Richard Buckminster Fuller on… Read the full story

Sir Winston Churchill was a British politician, known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century. Churchill served as Prime Minister twice from 1940-1945 and 1951-1955. He was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British Prime Minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature… Read the full story

John Foster Dulles served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953-1959. He advocated an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world which made him a significant figure in the early Cold War era. He also advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina and it is widely believed that he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai at the Geneva Conference in 1954…. Read the full story

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She wrote the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery, it became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. The novel energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She was influential both for her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day. After the start of the Civil War, Stowe… Read the full story

Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian and Unitarian clergyman. He was a child prodigy who exhibited extraordinary literary skills. He graduated from Boston Latin School at age 13, then enrolled at Harvard University where he won two Bowdoin prizes and was elected the Class Poet. In 1839, Hale graduated second in his class and then studied at Harvard Divinity School. He was licensed to preach as a Unitarian minister in 1842 by the… Read the full story

Oliver Ames was the 35th Governor of Massachusetts during 1887-1890 and a financier. Prior to being governor he was lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts from 1882-1886. Ames had entered public life avowedly to vindicate his father’s memory. Ames was born on February 4, 1831 in North Easton, Massachusetts to Oakes Ames and Eveline Gilmore. Oakes Ames was an American manufacturer, capitalist, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts. As a congressman, he is credited… Read the full story

Silas Wright Titus, known as “The Water Wizard”, was an engineer who discovered and patented deep water pumping technology. He also discovered early water supplies for New York City and other towns and cities in the United States in the late nineteenth century. Silas Wright Titus was born on January 18, 1849 in Syracuse, New York to Colonel Silas Titus and Eliza McCarthy. Titus was named for a friend of his father’s, Silas Wright, a… Read the full story

William E. Dodge, Sr. was a founding member of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and represented New York’s 8th congressional district in the United States Congress for a portion of the 39th United States Congress in 1866-1867. He was a noted abolitionist and Native American rights activist, and served as the president of the National Temperance Society from 1865-1883. He was born on September 4, 1805 in Hartford, Connecticut to David Low Dodge and Sarah Cleveland…. Read the full story

Mariana Victoria of Spain was born on March 31, 1718 in Spain and died on January 15, 1781 in Portugal. She was the eldest daughter of Felipe V of Spain and Elisabetta Farnese. At the age of seven Mariana Victoria of Spain was engaged to the young Louis XV of France, but was rejected due to her age. At the time of her birth, Mariana Victoria was fifth in line to the throne of Spain. In… Read the full story

Nicholas Biddle was an American financier who served as the President of the Second Bank of the United States. His ancestors were Quakers who emigrated from England to America in 1681 in part to avoid religious persecution. The Biddle family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania produced numerous and diverse people of interest. Biddle was born on January 8, 1786 to Charles and Hannah Biddle. Charles Biddle served as Vice-President of Pennsylvania (now known as the office of… Read the full story

George Mason IV was an American Patriot, statesman and a delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention. He is considered as one of the “Founding Fathers” of the United States as he is called the “Father of the United States Bill of Rights” along with James Madison. The Bill of Rights were based on the earlier Virginia Declaration of Rights, which Mason had drafted in 1776. George Mason IV was born on December 11,… Read the full story

Robert R. Liviingston IV was an American lawyer, politician, diplomat from New York, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, although he was recalled by his state before he could sign the final version of the document. Livingston was the first Chancellor of New York from 1777 to 1801 which at the time was the highest judicial officer in… Read the full story

Noah Webster, Jr. was a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, political writer and has been called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” His name became synonymous with “dictionary,” especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language. He was born on October 16, 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut to Noah Webster, Sr. and Mercy Steele. His mother spent long hours teaching Noah and his siblings… Read the full story

William Henry Moore was an attorney and financier. He and his brother James Hobart Moore controlled several makers of primary or finished steel products such as National Steel, American Tin Plate Company, American Steel Hoop Company and American Sheet Steel Metal. These four corporations were among the ten that were merged to form United States Steel. William Moore was born in 1848 to Nathaniel Ford Moore, a prominent banker and merchant in Utica, New York… Read the full story

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an American actress, comedienne and producer. She is well known for her roles in Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and  Veep. In the early 1980’s she was one of the regular cast members of Saturday Night Live. Louis-Dreyfus is one of the most nominated actresses in Emmy Award history with a total of 14 nominations. She has won three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and five Screen Actors Guild… Read the full story

Cecil B. DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. His best-known films are Cleopatra; Samson and Delilah; The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture; and The Ten Commandments, which was his last and most successful film. Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on August 12, 1881 to Henry Churchill and Matilda Beatrice de Mille. DeMille, but grew… Read the full story

James Spader is an America actor best known for his roles in films such as Pretty in Pink; Less Than Zero; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Crash; Stargate; and Secretary. His best known television roles are in The Practice as Alan Shore and its spin-off Boston Legal, for which he won three Emmy Awards, and in The Office as Robert California. He was born on February 7, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts to Stoddard Greenwood “Todd” and Jean (Fraser) Spader, both… Read the full story

Cokie Roberts is an American journalist and author. She is a contributing senior news analyst for National Public Radio as well as a regular round table analyst for the current This Week With George Stephanopoulos. She also works as a political commentator for ABC News, serving as an on-air analyst for the network. Roberts serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations such as the Kaiser Family Foundation. She is the author of the national… Read the full story

General Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army who was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930’s and played a prominent role in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. He was raised in a military family, when he entered West Point in 1899, his mother had also moved there to a suite at Craney’s Hotel, overlooking the grounds of the Academy. Hazing… Read the full story

T. S. Eliot was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and English-language poet of the 20th century. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (published in Chicago in 1915) was the poem that made his name and is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He… Read the full story

Jeff Bridges is an American actor, musician and producer. He began his first televised acting in 1958 as a child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television’s Sea Hunt. Some of his best-known major motion films include: Tron, Fearless, Iron Man, The Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, The Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, Arlington Road, and The Big Lebowski. He won the Academy Award for… Read the full story

Dick Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He starred in the films Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and in the TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis: Murder. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. He will be receiving the Screen Actors Guild’s highest honor: The Life Achievement Award at the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony in January 2013…. Read the full story

Eli Lilly was an American soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, entrepreneur, and founder of the Eli Lilly and Company Pharmaceutical Corporation. During the American Civil War, Lilly enlisted in the Union Army recruiting a company of men to serve with him in an artillery battery, he was later promoted to colonel, and was given command of a cavalry unit. He was captured near the end of the war and held as a prisoner of war until… Read the full story

Elizabeth Montgomery was an American film and television actress, best known as Samantha Stephens in Bewitched. Bewitched was a rating success and at the time was the highest rated series ever for the ABC network. Montgomery played the lovable witch Samantha Stevens for eight years (1964-1972). The show had been renewed for a ninth season (1972-1973), but Montgomery wanted to move on and backed out. She received five Emmy and four Golden Globe nominations for her role on Bewitched,… Read the full story

Nolan Hemmings is an English stage and film actor. He is most known for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Charles ‘Chuck’ Grant in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He is an actor in London’s West End Theatre. Nolan is married to actress Nikki Grosse who was one of the hosts on the Globe Trekker travel show. Hemmings was born in 1970 to English actor and director David Hemmings and American actress Gayle Hunnicutt. David… Read the full story

Anthony Howard “Tony” Goldwyn is an American actor and director. He stars in the ABC drama Scandal, as Fitzgerald Grant III, President of the United States. He played the role of Carl Bruner in Ghost, Colonel  Bagley in The Last Samurai, and the voice of the title character of the Disney animated Tarzan. He is also known for his role of Kendall Dobbs on the comedy series, Designing Women. Goldwyn had a recurring role on… Read the full story

Robin Williams is an American actor and comedian. He rose to fame in the late 1970s with his role as Mork, the alien in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work. Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen… Read the full story

Jordana Brewster is a Brazilian-American actress. She began her acting career in 1995 with a one-episode role in the soap opera All My Children. She then appeared in As the World Turns in the recurring role as Nikki Munson for which she was nominated for Outstanding Teen Performer at the 1997 Soap Opera Digest Award. Brewster’s first feature film was in Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 The Faculty playing the role of Delilah Profitt, one of the… Read the full story

Alexandra “Ali” Wentworth is an American comedienne, actress, and author who starred in the comedy Head Case on the Starz TV network. She has made many appearances on television, including being a cast member on In Living Color and appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 1995, she was in the famous “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfield playing Jerry’s girlfriend Sheila (“Schmoopie”). In 1997, Wentworth appeared as the love interest in the television film… Read the full story

Uma Thurman is an American actress and model. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a TV Mini-series in Hysterical Blindness, a series for which she also served as executive producer. Her most notable roles include Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction (1994), Debby Miller in Hysterical Blindness (2002), and Beatrix Kiddo in the Kill Bill films (2003/2004). Cosmetics company Lancôme selected her as their spokeswoman,… Read the full story

Woody Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. His musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, ballads and improvised works. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land.” Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. Guthrie has been acknowledged as a major influence for songwriters such as Bob Dylan,… Read the full story

Reese Witherspoon is an American actress, film producer, and television producer. Her first feature role as the female lead was in 1991 in the film The Man in the Moon. Witherspoon’s career turning point was her role as Elle Woods in the box office hit Legally Blonde in 2001. She then starred in Sweet Home Alabama in 2002 and returned as lead actress and executive producer of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde in… Read the full story