History of the Americas

The infamous Belle Starr was born Myra Maybelle Shirley in 1848, though everyone just called her May. The Shirleys lived in Missouri, where May’s father John owned a successful farm on the outskirts of Carthage. Her mother Eliza was John’s…

Ireland has produced many famous females who have made their mark in culture, politics and the arts. Many become household names, some are remembered and forgotten simultaneously, and others fall into obscurity. Jennie Hodgers could be…

Margaret Sanger, the mother of Planned Parenthood, was born as Margaret Higgins in the city of Corning in upstate New York in 1879. Both of her parents were Irish immigrants. Her father Michael Higgins had emigrated to America as a teenager…

The early life of Charles DeRudio reads a bit like historical fantasy. Perhaps it was - he wasn't a humble man. However given that the later and even more improbable events of his life are thoroughly documented, it may be that everything he…

Nat Turner was born into chains on the 2nd October 1800. His name was chosen for him by the man who owned him, owned him even before he was born. Nat’s parents were both slaves, and so he was a slave as well - that was the law in Virginia…

‘Race,’ President Obama said in his farewell address, ‘remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.’  ‘You never really know a person,’ he said, quoting Atticus Finch, hero of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, ‘until you…

Catherine and Margaretta Fox were born in New York State’s “burned over” district in the 1830s. They were the youngest of six children, with their oldest sister Anna Leah Fox (known as Leah) born in 1813 or 1814. Three other siblings were…

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in the small town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father Edward had returned to Amherst from Yale to join his father Samuel’s law business, and when she was five years old he took a post as treasurer at…

John Broadus Watson was born in 1878, the fourth of six children. His father, Pickens Butler Watson, had fought for the Confederates in the Civil War and had never really settled down afterwards. He spent most of his time away from home,…

Titanic Thompson, one of America’s most notorious gamblers, was born as Alvin Clarence Thomas in Missouri in 1893. His father abandoned his mother just after Alvin was born, and she remarried a farmer who lived in nearby Arkansas. Alvin…