Adler-Collins was the child of a military family who was taken into care at the age of three when his mother shot his father during a domestic dispute. He was abused in care for years, but ... [more]
Audubon was born in what is now Haiti, the son of a well-to-do married French naval captain and slave trader and his Creole servant-mistress. His mother died soon after his birth and his fa... [more]
Baker (the surname of her second husband) was born Josephine Carson to an unmarried couple in the slums of St. Louis, Missouri. Her father abandoned the family before she was a year old, an... [more]
Fox was born to a married couple who converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) five months after her birth. Her mother died in 1855 and her father was then sent... [more]
Grant was born George Roberts, the eldest of eight children. His mother was an alcoholic and his father a fisherman who was seldom home. From about the age of 12 he looked after his brothe... [more]
Head was the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a Black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. Her mother was sent to a mental hospital as punish... [more]
Hedgewar was the fifth of six children of a very poor family in Nagpur. His father was a Hindu priest. When he was 13 both his parents died the same day in one of the epidemics of bubonic p... [more]
Hokusai's first few years are a mystery, but he was born near Tokyo, and when he was four or five he was adopted by a mirror-polisher named Nakajima Ise. There is speculation that Nakajima ... [more]
Hurston was born in the all-Black and Black-governed town of Eatonville, Florida. Her father, a carpenter and minister, and his wife had eight children. When her mother died she was nine... [more]
Jacobs' entire immediate family died while he was a young child and he grew up poor and alone. He converted to Christianity about 1827 and became an interpreter for Methodist missionarie... [more]