Famous People of Massachusetts

Jack Albertson was Albertson was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants Flora Craft and Leopold Albertson. His sister was actress Mabel Albertson. Albertson's mother, a stock actress, supported the family by working in a shoe factory. Albertson dropped out of high school and traveled to New York City in an attempt to make it big in show business. He was too poor to get a room in a flophouse, so in the winter he would sleep on the IRT subway for a nickel, and hide out when the transit workers would clear out the train at the end of the line. In the summer he would sleep in Central Park. Albertson's first real job in show business was with a vaudeville road troupe, the Dancing Verselle Sisters. He was considered a complete entertainer from the old school. • Jack Albertson Books • Jack Albertson Movies

Louisa May Alcott portrays a writer as worthy of interest in her own right as her most famous character, Jo March, and addresses all aspects of Alcott¢s life: the effect of her father¢s self-indulgent utopian schemes; her family¢s chronic economic difficulties and frequent up-rootings; her experience as a nurse in the Civil War; the loss of her health and frequent recourse to opiates in search of relief from migraines, insomnia, and symptomatic pain. Stories and details culled from Alcott¢s journals; her equally rich letters to family, friends, publishers, and admiring readers; and the correspondence, journals, and recollections of her family, friends, and famous contemporaries provide the basis for this lively account of the author¢s classic rags-to-riches tale.• Louisa May Alcott Books

Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister, Alger entered Harvard University at the age of 16. Following graduation, he briefly worked in education before touring Europe for almost a year. He then entered the Harvard Divinity School, and, in 1864, took a position at a Unitarian church in Brewster, Massachusetts. Two years later, he resigned following a pederastic scandal involving two teenage boys. He subsequently retired from the ministry entirely and moved to New York City where he formed an association with the Newsboys Lodging House and other agencies offering aid to impoverished children. His empathy for the working boys of the city, coupled with the moral values learned at home, were the basis of his many juvenile "rags to riches" novels. He died in 1899. • Horatio Alger Books

Susan B. Anthony was born and raised in West Grove, near Adams, Massachusetts. She was the second oldest of seven children, Guelma Penn (1818), Susan Brownell (1820), Hannah E. (1821), Daniel Read (1824), Mary Stafford (1827), Eliza Tefft (1832), and Jacob Merritt (1834), born to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read. One brother, publisher Daniel Read Anthony, would become active in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, while a sister, Mary Stafford Anthony, became a teacher and a woman's rights activist. Anthony remained close to her sisters throughout her life. Anthony's father Daniel was a cotton manufacturer and abolitionist, a stern but open-minded man who was born into the Quaker religion. He did not allow toys or amusements into the household, claiming that they would distract the soul from the "inner light." Her mother Lucy was a student in Daniel's school; the two fell in love and agreed to marry in 1817, • Susan B. Anthony Books

Bailey was born in Waltham, Massachusetts. He went to Cardigan Mountain School and then Kimball Union Academy, graduating in the class of 1950. Bailey studied at Harvard College, but dropped out of Harvard to join the United States Marine Corps in 1952, and received his aviator wings in 1954. He served as a jet fighter pilot and a legal officer. He was discharged in 1956. Bailey received his LL.B. from Boston University, where he was ranked first in his graduating class in 1960 • F. Lee Bailey Books

Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts, to Stephen and Sarah Barton. She was the youngest of five children. Clara's father was a farmer and horse breeder, while her mother Sarah managed the household. The two later helped found the first Universalist Church in Oxford.

When Clara was eleven, her brother David became her first patient after he fell from a rafter in their unfinished barn. Clara stayed by his side for two years and learned to administer all his medicines, including the "great, loathsome crawling leeches".

As she continued to develop an interest in nursing, Clara may have drawn inspiration from stories of her great-aunt, Martha Ballard, who served the town of Hallowell (later Augusta), Maine, as a midwife for over three decades. Ballard helped deliver nearly one thousand infants between 1777 and 1812, and in many cases administered medical care in much the same way as a formally trained doctor of her era. • Clara Barton Books

Bird was born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, on June 9, 1921. Bird became a pilot at an early age due to the encouragement of his father, a World War I pilot, and from meeting Orville Wright at an early age. He performed his first solo flight at age 14; by age 16, he was working to obtain multiple major pilot certifications. Bird enlisted with the United States Army Air Corps, and entered active duty in 1941 as a technical air training officer due to his advanced qualifications. This rank, combined with the onset of World War II, gave him the opportunity to pilot almost every aircraft in service, including early jet aircraft and helicopters.

The newest models of aircraft were capable of exceeding altitudes at which humans can breathe normally, introducing the risk of altitude sickness. • Forrest M. Bird Books

Bryant was born on November 3, 1794, in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; the home of his birth is today marked with a plaque. He was the second son of Peter Bryant, a doctor and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell. His maternal ancestry traces back to passengers on the Mayflower; his father's, to colonists who arrived about a dozen years later.

Bryant and his family moved to a new home when he was two years old. The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, his boyhood home, is now a museum. After just two years at Williams College, he studied law in Worthington and Bridgewater in Massachusetts, and he was admitted to the bar in 1815. He then began practicing law in nearby Plainfield, walking the seven miles from Cummington every day. On one of these walks, in December 1815, he noticed a single bird flying on the horizon; the sight moved him enough to write "To a Waterfowl".

Bryant developed an interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. • William Cullen Bryant Books

He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank's varied creations included fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.

Burbank's most successful strains and varieties include the Shasta daisy, the Fire poppy, the July Elberta peach, the Santa Rosa plum, the Flaming Gold nectarine, the Wickson plum, the Freestone peach, and the white blackberry. A natural genetic variant of the Burbank potato with russet-colored skin later became known as the Russet Burbank potato. This large, brown-skinned, white-fleshed potato has become the world's predominant potato in food processing. • Luther Burbank Books

He was also a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian Church, so named because it teaches the theological doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.

John Chapman was the second child of Nathaniel Chapman and Elizabeth (née Simonds) (who married February 8, 1770) of Leominster, Massachusetts. Tradition holds that Nathaniel lost two good farms during the American Revolution, but in fact Johnny's father was a farmer of little means, and there is no deed record of either property. Nathaniel started John Chapman on a career as an orchardist by apprenticing him to a Mr. Crawford, who had apple orchards. • Johnny Appleseed Books

Copley's mother owned a tobacco shop on Long Wharf. The parents, who according to the artist's granddaughter, Martha Babcock Amory, came to Boston in 1736, were "engaged in trade, like almost all the inhabitants of the North American colonies at that time". The father was from Limerick; the mother, of the Singletons of County Clare, a family of Lancashire origin. Letters from John Singleton, Mrs. Copley's father, are in the Copley-Pelham collection. Richard Copley, described as a tobacconist, is said by several biographers to have arrived in Boston in ill health and to have gone, about the time of John's birth, to the West Indies, where he died. William H. Whitmore gives his death as of 1748, the year of Mrs. Copley's remarriage. James Bernard Cullen says: "Richard Copley was in poor health on his arrival in America and went to the West Indies to improve his failing strength. He died there in 1737." Neither of the foregoing dates have been confirmed. • John Singleton Copley Books

Cummings' publishers and others have sometimes echoed the unconventional orthography in his poetry by writing his name in lower case and without periods. Cummings himself used both the lowercase and capitalized versions, but according to his widow did not, as reported in the preface of one book, have his name legally changed to "e e cummings". He did, however, write to his French translator that he preferred the capitalized version ("may it not be tricksy"). One Cummings scholar believes that on the occasions Cummings signed his name in all-lowercase, the poet may have intended it as a gesture of humility, and not as an indication that it was the preferred orthography for others to use for his name. • E. E. Cummings Books

DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts while his parents were vacationing there and grew up in Washington, North Carolina. While he is known as DeMille (his nom d'oeuvre), his family name was Dutch and is usually spelt Demil.[1] His father, Henry Churchill DeMille (1853–1893), was a North Carolina-born dramatist and lay reader in the Episcopal Church. His mother, Matilda Beatrice (Samuel) DeMille (1853–1923), was born in England to a Sephardic Jewish family but converted to her husband's faith. DeMille attended Pennsylvania Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania from the age of 15. He had an elder brother, William, and a sister Agnes, who died in childhood. Cecil DeMille's famous niece was named for her. After Henry DeMille's death at age 40, Cecil's mother, Beatrice, ran a well-known boarding school for girls in Wayne, New Jersey. • Cecil B. DeMille Books • Cecil B. DeMille Films

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence". Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson's enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803, son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister who descended from a well-known line of ministers. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and the father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—all died in childhood • Ralph Waldo Emerson Books

His long journey began as an actor, appearing on TV commercials for candy bars such as "Twix," and for McDonalds, and Brian quickly moved into doing movies such as Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987) with Charles Bronson and Book of Love (1990), a movie directed by Robert Shaye, the founder of New Line Cinema, and also the man behind the "Lord of The Rings" success. "Book of Love" remains the only film he directed for New Line, casting Brian in the role of "Schank."

Brian then was asked to do a guest appearance on a new TV series called "Beverly Hills Brats. He appeared on the pilot episode, which was a 90-minute TV movie, special later renamed "Beverly Hills, 90210." While waiting to see what happened with "90210," Brian took a guest spot on "Full House" (1987) playing the role of Keanu, the boyfriend of Kimmy, played by Andrea Barber. • Brian Evans Books • Brian Evans Discography

Fuller published more than thirty books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews, and also the grandnephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. He attended Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending much of his youth on Bear Island, in Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine, he was a boy with a natural propensity for design and construction. He often made items from materials he brought home from the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats. Years later, he decided that this sort of experience had provided him with not only an interest in design, but also a habit of being familiar with and knowledgeable about the materials that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a machinist's certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade. • Buckminster Fuller Books

Robert Goddard received little scientific support during his lifetime. Eventually, however, he became recognized — along with Tsiolkovsky and Oberth — as one of the fathers of modern rocketry. He was the first not only to recognize the scientific potential behind missiles and space travel but also to bring about the physical design and construction of those ideas.

Goddard was born in 1882 Worcester, Massachusetts to Nahum Danford Goddard (1859–1928) and Fannie Louise Hoyt (1864–1920). Robert was their only child to live; another younger son was born with physical disabilities, and died not long after birth. With the introduction of electric power in American cities in the 1880s, the young Goddard became interested in science. When his father showed him how to generate static electricity on the family's carpet, the five-year-old's imagination was inspired. Robert experimented, believing he could jump higher if the zinc in batteries could somehow be charged with static electricity. The experiments failed, but his interest continued unabated. • Robert Hutchings Goddard Books