17th Century

Bach, Johann Sebastian

Bach was born in Eisenach, the eighth and last child of Johann Ambrosius and Maria Elisabeth Bach. His mother died in 1694 and his father in 1695. The nine-year-old orphan and his brother J... [more]

Bartram, John

Bartram, born to a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, was orphaned when he was 13. He taught himself botany, medicine and surgery while working as a farm laborer. He was appointed Botanist to t... [more]

Bradford, William

Bradford was born into a well-off family in Yorkshire, but his father died in 1591. His mother remarried in 1593 and William was then raised by his grandfather and uncles as a farmer. Wh... [more]

Cardozo, Abraham

Cardozo was a member of a Portuguese Marrano family. (The Marranos are the Jews of Spain and Portugal who involuntarily converted to Christianity in the 14th century and later, many of whom... [more]

Catherine I

Marta Skavronskaya was born a peasant in what is now Latvia, orphaned when three years old and fostered by a Lutheran pastor named Glück. In 1702 she was taken prisoner during a war with Ru... [more]

Child Migrants

These are the children sent from Britain and Ireland to colonies and former colonies with the express intention of helping to culturally swamp the native peoples by increasing the white pop... [more]

Cockenoe

Cockenoe was an Algonquian Indian, captured as a youth by the British (in 1636 or 1637). He became a servant of a British officer, Richard Collicot, where he came to the notice of John Elio... [more]

Colden, Cadwallader

Colden was born in Ireland and after graduating from the University of Edinburgh (1705) he emigrated to the American colonies (1710). He spent the next half century in the colonial civil se... [more]

Colden, Cadwallader

Colden was born in Ireland and after graduating from the University of Edinburgh (1705) he emigrated to the American colonies (1710). He spent the next half century in the colonial civil se... [more]

de Porres, Martin

Martín de Porres was born in Lima. There are two versions of his early life. In one, he was the son of an unknown father and a free African-Peruvian mother, adopted when he was eight by ... [more]