The rise of female impersonator Julian Eltinge was a twist on the old story of instant stardom, in which an agent/producer spots...
As the Civil War raged in 1862, 35-year-old Elizabeth Jarvis Colt suddenly lost her beloved husband and year-old daughter to illness. A...
Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1893 dismissed 21-year-old Beatrix Farrand as a dilettante gardener, but six years later she had...
The educational reformer who founded Miss Porter’s School in 1843 could not have imagined the fame, fortune, scandal and accomplishment her students...
Samuel McIntire, who was born and died in poverty, created fine Federal style buildings in Salem, Mass., for wealthy patrons. Today, an...
Twenty-one-year-old S. Z. Poli came to America in 1881 with little more than the ability to carve lifelike figures from wax. He...