Financial Problems, Poverty, Bankruptcy

Adler-Collins, Je Kan

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, John James

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, Josephine

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, Ruth May

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, Julia

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, Bessie

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, Keshav Baliram

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

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, Zora Neale

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, Peter

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]