Poor Educational Opportunities, Self-Taught

Armstrong, Louis Daniel

Armstrong's parents separated about the time he was born and he was raised in great poverty, first by his grandmother and then by his mother, with his sister. His education ended in the fif... [more]

Baca, Jimmy Santiago

When their parents divorced and abandoned them, Baca, aged two, and his siblings were sent to live with grandparents. By the time he was five his mother had been murdered by her second husb... [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]

Ballinger, John

Ballinger was orphaned as a child and left school at 14. He got a job as an assistant in the Cardiff Public Library in 1875 and rose to be chief librarian by 1885. In 1908 he became the fir... [more]

Basavis (under Devadasi)

Devadasi (mainly of Maharashtra and Karnataka states) and related practices ( Maharis in Kerala, Natis in Assam, Muralis in Maharashtra, Bogams in Andhra Pradesh, Jogatis and Basa... [more]

Blackburn, Tom (see Deacon, Joseph John)

Deacon was born with severe cerebral palsy of the entire body. His mother died when he was six and he went to live with his grandmother. When he was eight, after a number of operations, he ... [more]

Bogams (under Devadasi)

Devadasi (mainly of Maharashtra and Karnataka states) and related practices ( Maharis in Kerala, Natis in Assam, Muralis in Maharashtra, Bogams in Andhra Pradesh, Jogatis and Basa... [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]

Cochran, Jacqueline

Cochran was born sometime between 1906 and 1910, and was orphaned as a baby. She was a foster child in a feckless, poverty-stricken family (she got her first pair of shoes when she was eigh... [more]

Deacon, Joseph John

Deacon was born with severe cerebral palsy of the entire body. His mother died when he was six and he went to live with his grandmother. When he was eight, after a number of operations, he ... [more]