Abbreviated Bios

Zebulon Pike explored much of the Louisiana Purchase that Lewis and Clark missed. He was also a hero of the War of 1812.

Kenneth Roberts wrote intense novels about the early years of the American Republic. He also tried to rehabilitate the reputation of American traitor Benedict Arnold.

Charles Drew trained himself to be the number one expert in blood storage. His innovations would later save millions of people.

General Samuel Armstrong opened a school for former slaves after the Civil War to train them in how to make a living.

Joseph Warren was one of the most important Patriot leaders in the events just prior to the American Revolution. He is mostly forgotten today because he died at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

George Chaffey was a pioneer in irrigation. He developed towns in California and Australia, electrified them and created the Imperial Valley.

Benjamin Church is known and the first army ranger and used those tactics to defeat King Philip's forces in the war of that name.

Charles Curtis started out life on an Indian Reservation and made it all the way to the Vice-Presidency.

George Bancroft was America's first great historian but more importantly established the U.S. Naval Academy.

Timothy Dwight, as president of Yale, resisted the influence of French Revolution ideas, which resulted in revival breaking out.

Judith Reisman is the woman who exposed Alfred Kinsey's experiments as a fraud.

John Russell Pope was one of the last neo-classical architects in the U.S. The buildings he designed are some of the most beautiful in the country.

Robert Smalls, as a slave, was trained to be a wheelman on a steamboat. He would use those skills to escape and turn the ship over to the Union Navy.

George Wythe was a founder who was far ahead of most of the others on race relations and wrote legal opinions to undermine slavery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was America's first great novelist. He wrote one of the most required books to read in high school, The Scarlet Letter

General James Wilkinson was for 12 years the senior soldier in the U.S. Army. All during that time, he was a paid agent of the Spanish empire. He was never definitively caught during his lifetime.

Russell Kirk was a public intellectual and writer who gave conservatism its name.

Elizabeth Bentley was a Soviet spy who switched to the American side, disrupting KGB operations throughout the U.S.

Medgar Evers was an important civil rights leader in Mississippi.  He was assassinated in 1963.

Frederick Gates was the man most responsible for the rise in scientific medicine which led to Big Pharma.

David Hosack was not only the attending physician at the Hamilton-Burr duel, he also found the first botanic garden in America to train medical students.  He was the first American doctor to regularly use the stethoscope.

William Jennings Bryan, the Old Commoner, was a 3-time presidential candidate who later became a Secretary of State. Sadly, he is only remembered for a wildly inaccurate portrayal of him in the movie "inherit the Wind." Learn who he really was.

Andrew Mellon served 3 Presidents as Secretary of State and helped create the Roaring 20s economy.  He made a big profit from it, too.

Albert G. Spalding helped establish baseball as America's National Pastime and created a sporting goods company that still supplies sports equipment to people around the world.

henry Morris is considered the "Father of Creation Science" and was partly responsible for the lessening belief in the theory of evolution.