David Dunbar Buick (1854 - 1929)

Scottish-American inventor and automotive pioneer, best known for starting the car company that became the Buick Motor Division of General Motors Corporation (GM).  He was born David Dunbar Buick on September 17, 1854 at 26 Green Street, Arbroath, Scotland.  His father, Alexander Buick, a joiner, emigrated to America with his wife and son when David […]

John Richards Buchtel (1820 - 1892)

Businessman. Co-founder, along with Lewis Miller, of the Buckeye Mower and Reaper Works in Akron, Ohio. He sponsored the construction of Buchtel College in Akron which opened in 1872. The College burned to the ground on December 20, 1899. The street in front of the building was re-named Buchtel Ave. The name Buchtel dose not […]

William Harry Brown (1856 - 1921)

Businessman. He and his brothers organized the firm of Wm. H. Brown & Sons of Pittsburgh in 1876.  They were the largest shippers of coal on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  Mr. Brown’s private mausoleum, the Pyramid, was built in 1898-99. It is the only one of its type in Homewood Cemetery and has become […]

John Sidney Brown (1833 - 1913)

Businessman. President and founder of J. S. Brown & Bro. Mercantile Company. By 1899, it became the largest Mercantile Company in the western United States. He was a director in the South Park railroad, assisted in the building of the Denver Pacific Railroad, between Denver and Cheyenne, and was a promoter, director and vice-president of […]

Robert Howell Brooks (1937 - 2006)

Entrepreneur. He is best known as the chairman of Hooters Restaurants, who began his successful climb by selling salad dressings and other products made by Naturally Fresh Foods, a company that he founded in 1967. He also was known for his charity,  giving $2 million to Coastal Carolina University to build it’s football stadium, now […]

John Brinsmead (1970 - 1970)

Overtook Broadwood in 1900 as US’ largest piano manufacturer.  Family links:  Spouse:  Susan Ann Browne Brinsmead (1813 – 1907)*  Children:  John Brinsmead (1841 – 1863)*  Edgar William Brinsmead (1848 – 1907)*  Horace George Brinsmead (1854 – 1908)* *Calculated relationship

Theo Brinckwirth (1817 - 1866)

German-born Brinckwirth moved to the United States in 1846 & established a primitive brewery in Quincy, Illinois. After remaining there for three years he moved to St. Louis & bought was was then known as the Lafayette Brewery. A pioneer of the beer brewing industry in St. Louis, Brinckwirth conducted business at the brewery until […]

Louis Brinckwirth (1855 - 1911)

Mr. Brinckwirth learned the brewery business with his father Theodore, who had established the Lafayette Brewery in 1848. After working for two years for the Brinckwirth-Griesdieck-Nolker brewery in St. Louis, Missouri, he went to Milwaukee to get further information about the brewing business by working at the Blatz Brewery. After studying there & in Wheeling, […]

William A. Breyer (1970 - 1882)

Businessman. He founded the ice cream manufacturing company “Breyer’s Ice Cream”. He mixed “pure ingredients” and fresh fruit to make an ice cream that made Philadelphia famous. The family began wholesale production, and eventually opened retail ice cream shops. The Frankford ice cream merchant died of small pox. (bio by: rjschatz)  Family links:  Spouse:  Louisa […]

Adolf Bremer (1869 - 1939)

Businessman. Financier and president of Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company. The son-in-law of Jacob Schmidt and the father of Edward Bremer, who was a 1934 kidnap victim of the Barker-Karpis gang.  Family links:  Spouse:  Marie Schmidt Bremer (1852 – 1928)*  Children:  Marie B Bremer Reim (1903 – 2007)* *Calculated relationship

Thomas Elmer Braniff (1883 - 1954)

Businessman. One of the nation’s leading insurance men. Chairman and president of Prudential Insurance. In 1927 he bought a second-hand airplane and co-founded Braniff Airlines, the first airline in the Southwest.  Family links:  Parents:  Thomas J Braniff (1846 – 1930)  Mary Casey Braniff (1852 – 1940)  Spouse:  Bess Thurman Braniff (1887 – 1954)*  Children:  Jeanne […]

Paul Bonwit (1862 - 1939)

Businessman. He founded the former department store Bonwitt Teller in New York City.  Family links:  Spouse:  Rebecca Woolf Bonwit (1869 – 1934)*  Children:  Harold Woolf Bonwit (1896 – 1950)*  Walter Bernard Bonwit (1901 – 1984)* *Calculated relationship

John Paris “J.P.” Bickell (1884 - 1951)

Business Magnate, Canadian Sports Benefactor. Bickell was a popular Toronto, Ontario, businessman who had a great contribution to the benefit of professional hockey. Bickell had successful career in business thanks to the success of the teams of the Toronto St. Pats and the Toronto Maple Leafs as well as many other causes. Bickell who was […]

William Peter Bettendorf (1857 - 1910)

Inventor, Businessman. As president and co-founder of Bettendorf Axle Company, he invented the Bettendorf Truck, which revolutionized the railroad industry. Before that time, railroad trucks had been made from many smaller pieces. The Bettendorf Truck was cast from one piece of steel. The city of Bettendorf, Iowa is named for him and his brother, Joseph. […]

Lauren Gail Bessette (1964 - 1999)

Sister-in-law of socialite figure John F. Kennedy, Jr., she and her sister Carolyn were killed when the plane they were traveling in crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.   The National Transportation Safety Board later determined that the probable cause was the pilot’s failure to maintain control during descent over water at […]

August “The Younger” Belmont (1853 - 1924)

Financier, Sportsman. The son of August Belmont, Sr. he was birthed into the wealth of the banking and international political scene that his father had constructed as a Prussian immigrant. An 1874 graduate of Harvard University, he is credited, through his love for sports and being a champion sprinter with inventing spiked track shoes.  Upon […]

August “The Elder” Belmont (1816 - 1890)

Financier. Born in Alzei, Rhensih, Prussia he started his banking career early by working at the entry level for the prominent House of Rothchilds at the tender age of fourteen, working his way up to positions in Frankfort and Naples then becoming their American representative in New York in 1837. His time in America proved […]

Jules Semon “J.S.” Bache (1861 - 1944)

Businessman. He began his career as a cashier in Leopold Cahn and Company in 1880. He later he headed the firm and changed the banking firm name to J.S. Bache and Company.  Family links:  Parents:  Elizabeth Van Praag Bache (1833 – 1913)  Siblings:  Henrietta Bache Kayser (1850 – 1943)*  Sarah Bache Thurnauer (1853 – 1884)* […]

John Jacob Astor, Sr (1763 - 1848)

Businessman, Merchant, Investor. He became the first multi-millionaire and creator of the first trust in the United States as a result of his fur business, the American Fur Company. Born Johann Jakob Astor in what is now known as Waldorf, in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, he began working as an assistant in his father’s […]

Elizabeth Arden (1878 - 1966)

Businesswoman. She is remembered for founding what is known as Elizabeth Arden, Incorporated, a US cosmetics empire. She was largely responsible for establishing makeup as proper and appropriate, even necessary, for a ladylike image, when before makeup had often been associated with lower classes and such professions as prostitution. Her products targeted middle-age and plain […]

Stuart Anderson (1922 - 2016)

Restaurant Chain Founder. Born in Tacoma, but raised in Seattle, he was a tank driver with Patton’s Third Army during World War II. Upon his discharge, he returned to Seattle and bought an old downtown hotel which had a small restaurant. In 1964, he opened the first Black Angus in Seattle and saw the chain […]

(1880 - 1967)

Businessman. He founded what would become the Nissan Corporation. A native of Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial Industrial University. After his graduation he joined the Shibaura Engineering Works as a probationary worker. He went to the United States to learn technologies for casting, because he found casting methods in Japan to be […]

Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931)

Author. Editor of “Woman”. Famous for his cliffhanger novels (“The Five Towns”) about the pottery area of Stoke-On-Trent.  Inscription:“Here liethe ashes ofEnochArnold BENNET authorson of Enoch & Sarah Ann BENNETTborn 27th May 1867died 29th March 1931”

DeRobigne Mortimer “D.M.” Bennett (1818 - 1882)

Journalist. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of The “Truth Seeker”, a freethought and reform periodical. Considered one of 19th-century America’s most controversial publishers, he founded the “blasphemous” (as it was called) newspaper in 1873, and his publications were censored and prohibited from newsstands. In less than a decade, he became the most successful […]

Arnold Bennett (1867 - 1931)

Arnold Bennett won a literary competition hosted by Tit-Bits magazine in 1889 and was encouraged to take up journalism full-time. In 1894, he became assistant editor of the periodical Woman. He noticed that the material offered by a syndicate to the magazine was not very good, so he wrote a serial which was bought by […]

Dr. Gottfried Benn (1886 - 1956)

Gottfried Benn was born in a Lutheran country parsonage, a few hours from Berlin, the son and grandson of pastors in Mansfeld, now part of Putlitz in the district of Prignitz, Brandenburg. He was educated in Sellin in the Neumark and Frankfurt an der Oder. To please his father, he studied theology at the University […]

Ernest Benn (1875 - 1954)

Ernest Benn was born in Oxted, Surrey. He attended the Central Foundation Boys’ School As a civil servant in the Ministry of Munitions and Reconstruction during the First World War he came to believe in the benefits of state intervention in the economy. In the mid-1920s, however, he changed his mind and adopted “the principles of […]

Walter Benjamin (1892 - 1940)

Walter Benjamin (German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn]; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, […]

Västgöta Bengtsson (1908 - 2000)

Ethnologist, Educator, Author. His name was Sixten Bengtsson, but to the people of Sweden, he was to be known as ”Västgöta-Bengtsson”. ”Västgöta” indicates the province of Västergötland where he throughout his life pursued research and documentation of peasant living, national characters, idioms and philology. He educated the people of Sweden on these subjects through TV, […]

Stephen Vincent Benet (1898 - 1943)

Author. Poet. Born in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania, the son of Colonel J. Walker Benét and Frances Neill Rose, his family had a long military tradition. At ten, Benét attended the Hitchcock Military Academy, but was eventually rejected by the army due to poor vision. During WWI he worked in Washington, D.C. as a cipher clerk. […]