American

John Boyle O'Reilly, the greatest Irishman in America at the time of his death, was born at Douth Castle, Drogheda, Ireland, on June 28, 1844. After an education at the National School, and an early career in journalism, he enlisted in the Hussars and became a Fenian.

Born on June 9, 1922, in Shanghai, the son of American missionaries (John Gillespie Magee and Faith Emmeline Backhouse), John Gillespie Magee Jr. received his education at the American School, Nanking (1929-31), St. Clare's near Walmer, Kent (1931-35), Rugby School (1935-39), and Avon Old Farms School, near Hartford, Connecticut (1939-40).

Obituary on TimesonLine (November 5, 2004).

Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States (1913-21), founder of the Société des Nations (the League of Nations), and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

William Vaughn Moody was born on July 8, 1869, in Spenser, Indiana, and his family moved in 1871 to New Albany. He obtained his B.A. (1893) and M.A. (1894) at Harvard University, where he became co-editor of the Harvard Monthly, and joined its English Department in the 1894-95 academic year as assistant to Louis E. Gates.

Born July 22, 1849, in New York city to Moses and Esther Nathan Lazarus, assimilated, Sephardic Jews, Emma Lazarus grew up in New York city and Newport, Rhode Island. In 1866 she published her first book, Poems and Translations, after which Emerson acted as her informal mentor.

Henry Clay Work, born on October 1, 1832, grew up in Middletown, Connecticut, the son of an active opponent of slavery, who helped thousands of slaves to escape north. Work took employment as a printer in Chicago in 1854, but in 1853, 1876-77, and 1882-83, Work wrote 75 songs, at first encouraged by the minstrel E. P. Christy, and then under contract to Root and Cady, music publishers.

William Carlos Williams served as a physician in his home town of Rutherford, New Jersey, from 1910 to 1951, and in hours after work wrote fiction, poetry, plays, and criticism. He was born on September 17, 1883, in Rutherford, educated at Horace Mann School in New York, and from 1902 until 1906 studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he met Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle.

Born December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, John Greenleaf Whittier, inspired by reading Robert Burns, wrote and published poems in local journals beginning in 1826. After a two-year education at Haverhill Academy, Whittier embarked on a lifelong career of journalism, editing one newspaper after another.

Born in Huntington, Long Island, on May 31, 1819, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Walt Whitman was the second eldest of nine children.