Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography
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Selected biographies list
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/1
Glenn Hammond Curtiss (21 May 1878 – 23 July 1930) was an aviation pioneer and founder of the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, now part of Curtiss-Wright Corporation. In 1930, he was awarded a Medal of Honor for his significant aviation accomplishments. Curtiss was born in 1878 in Hammondsport, New York to Frank Richmond Curtiss and Lua Andrews. Although he only received a formal education up to Grade 8, his early interest in mechanics and inventions was evident at his first job at the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company (later Eastman Kodak Company) in Rochester, New York. He invented a stencil machine adopted at the plant and later built a rudimentary camera to study photography. On 7 March 1898, Curtiss married Lena Pearl Neff, daughter of Guy L. Neff, in Logansport, Indiana. Curtiss began his career as a bicycle racer, Western Union bicycle messenger, and bicycle shop owner. He developed an interest in motorcycles when internal combustion engines became more available.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/2
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature." Elmira, New York just to the south of the Finger Lakes, was the home of Mark Twain in his later life.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/3
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the Presidency upon the death of a sitting President, succeeding Zachary Taylor who died of what is thought to be acute gastroenteritis or hyperthermia (heat stroke). Fillmore was never elected President; after serving out Taylor's term, he failed to gain the nomination for the Presidency of the Whigs in the 1852 presidential election, and, four years later, in the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win election as the Know Nothing Party and Whig candidate. Fillmore was born in a log cabin in Cayuga County in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, to Nathaniel Fillmore and Phoebe Millard, as the second of nine children and the eldest son.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/4
Harriet Tubman (born c.1820 – 10 March 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the U.S. Civil War. After escaping from captivity, she made thirteen missions to rescue over seventy slaves using the network of antislavery activists known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage. Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various owners as a child. In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. She guided many slaves to freedom, and when a far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly-freed slaves find work. Tubman worked for the Union Army during the American Civil War; first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/5
John Henry Hobart (September 14, 1775 – September 12, 1830), was the third Episcopal bishop of New York (1816–1830) He vigorously promoted the extension of the Episcopal Church in Central and Western New York. He founded the General Theological Seminary in New York City and Geneva College, later renamed after him, in Geneva, in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/6
The Fox sisters, Kate (1838–92), Leah (1814–90) and Margaret (or Maggie) (1836–93) Fox played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism, the religious movement. In 1848, the two younger sisters – Kate and Margaret – were living in a house in Hydesville, a village near Rochester, New York with their parents. The house had some prior reputation for being haunted, but it wasn't until late March that the family began to be frightened by unexplained sounds. The neighbors were called in, and over the course of the next few days a type of code was developed where raps could signify yes or no in response to a question, or be used to indicate a letter of the alphabet. The alleged "entity" creating the sounds claimed to be the spirit of a peddler named Charles B. Rosma, who had been murdered five years earlier and buried in the cellar. It wasn't until 1904 that a skeleton was found, buried in the cellar wall. No missing person named Charles B. Rosma was ever identified. Kate and Margaret were sent away to nearby Rochester during the excitement; and it was found that the rappings followed them. Amy and Isaac Post, a radical Quaker couple and long-standing friends of the Fox family, were convinced of the genuineness of the phenomena. They helped spread the word among their radical Quaker friends and became the early core of Spiritualists.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/7
Msgr. Joseph M. Champlin (May 11, 1930 – January 17, 2008) a Roman Catholic priest, author, and lecturer. Father Champlin was born in Hammondsport, New York, the son of Francis Malburn and Katherine Masson Champlin and stepson of Charles Haynes. He was educated in his hometown public schools before graduating from Phillips Academy at Andover, MA. After studying at Yale and Notre Dame Universities, he began his journey to the priesthood at seminaries in Rochester, New York. He was ordained Thursday, February 2, 1956 and enjoyed a full and varied priestly ministry for over 50 years. Father Champlin’s first assignment was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. He subsequently served as pastor at Holy Family in Fulton, and St. Joseph’s, Camillus and returned to the Cathedral where he retired after serving as Rector from 1995–2005. At the time of his death, he was the sacramental priest at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Warners.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/8
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American social activist and leading figure of the early woman's movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States. Before Stanton narrowed her political focus almost exclusively to women's rights, she was an active abolitionist together with her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton and cousin, Gerrit Smith. Unlike many of those involved in the women's rights movement, Stanton addressed a number of issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce laws, the economic health of the family, temperance, and birth control.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/9
Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure in the United States during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that he had discovered and was translating a set of golden plates describing a visit by Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, near Manchester, New York. He published these in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. The plates' title page indicated the book was to be entitled the Book of Mormon: An account written by the hand of Mormon, upon plates taken from the Plates of Nephi. Translation was completed around July 1, 1829, and the Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830, with the financial assistance of Martin Harris. Smith also organized a denomination of restorationist Christianity, began preparing a new Bible translation, and directed followers to the western outpost of Jackson County, Missouri, where he planned to establish a Mormon utopian society.
Portal:Finger Lakes/Selected biography/10
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was born in a log cabin in Cayuga County in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. He was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the Presidency upon the death of a sitting President, succeeding Zachary Taylor who died of what is thought to be acute gastroenteritis or hyperthermia (heat stroke). Fillmore was never elected President; after serving out Taylor's term, he failed to gain the nomination for the Presidency of the Whigs in the 1852 presidential election, and, four years later, in the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win election as the Know Nothing Party and Whig candidate.
Nominations
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