James Oliver Van de Velde was a U.S. Catholic bishop born in Belgium. He served as the second Roman Catholic Bishop of Chicago between 1849 and 1853. He traveled to Rome in 1852 and petitioned the Pope for a transfer to a warmer climate, due to his health. In 1853, the transfer was granted; Van de Velde became bishop of the Diocese of Natchez, in Mississippi, where he served until his death two years later.
Newton Booth was an American entrepreneur and politician.
Joshua Abraham Norton, known as Emperor Norton, was a resident of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself "Norton I., Emperor of the United States". In 1863, after Napoleon III invaded Mexico, he took the secondary title of "Protector of Mexico".
Jesse Wilbur Ames, also known as Juliano Ames, was a San Diego pioneer. He was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts but arrived as a sailor in San Diego in 1820, from Plainfield, Connecticut.
John Mohler Studebaker was the Pennsylvania Dutch co-founder and later executive of what would become the Studebaker Corporation automobile company. He was the third son of the founding Studebaker family, and played a key role in the growth of the company during his years as president, from 1868 until his death in 1917.
Peter Donahue, was an Irish American businessman and Industrial pioneer. He and his brothers James and Michael are considered the founders of industrial San Francisco. Born in Glasgow, Scotland of Northern Irish parents, his family moved to Paterson, New Jersey when he and his brothers were young. It was there that they learned the trade of machinists.
Louis James Balbach was an American diver who competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics.
Benjamin Hayes, or Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, (1815–1877) was an American pioneer who was the first judge of the district court that served Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino counties in California. His seminal rulings are still cited in that state's courts.
Cadwalader Ringgold was an officer in the United States Navy who served in the United States Exploring Expedition, later headed an expedition to the Northwest and, after initially retiring, returned to service during the Civil War.
The Guthrey Centre at 126 Cashel Street, Christchurch Central City, originally the offices of Andersons Foundry and later 'Andersons Ltd, was a Category I heritage building registered by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. The building was demolished following severe damage from the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
Parker Hardin French was a nineteenth-century adventurer, entrepreneur, and swindler, labeled and chronicled by author Joe Goodbody as the “Kentucky Barracuda.” In the era of steam, sail and horse, the rapidity of French's movement and breadth of his adventures is almost mind-numbing. As a runaway child he fought in the Royal Navy in the First Opium War as a cabin boy and a "powder monkey". When he was just 22 years old, he was a commission merchant and, a year later, built the first ocean going ship on the upper Mississippi. Before he was 30, he was the leader of an infamous and fraudulent gold rush expedition; implicated in an irregular invasion of Cuba; jailed bandit and then military hero in Mexico; lawyer, district attorney, legislator, journalist, and political enforcer in California; senior conspirator in William Walker's conquest of Nicaragua; and appointed but rejected Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States. He didn't slow down in his thirties: he was a real estate developer; lawyer; journalist; part of a conspiracy to invade Mexico; suspected seditionist agitator and Confederate agent; jailed as a political prisoner; and lawyer and purveyor for Union troops. His final days were spent in obscurity but the period was still peppered with the occasional swindle that garnered both regional and national attention. When Colonel Parker Hardin French died in 1878, his death went generally unnoticed. Newspapers had reported the death of French before—at least five separate times. He had been twice killed in gunfights, twice executed in Mexico—once by a firing squad, once by hanging—and once killed in Nicaragua. Acquaintances thought he might have drunk himself to death. For a while, there was a lapse of interesting press reports, so many just presumed that he was already dead and were surprised when he was not. Some pondered his many misadventures and wondered how he escaped retribution from a hangman, a firing squad, or an irate victim. Though a notorious scoundrel in his time, notably from 1850 to 1862, French has been relegated to a minor footnote in antebellum America and Civil War history. The crafty Parker Hardin French contributed more to mid-nineteenth century history than has been previously documented.
William Taylor Barnes Sanford (1814–1863) was an American road builder, a landowner and the second postmaster of Los Angeles, California, after it became a part of the United States. He was a member of the Los Angeles Common Council in 1853–54.
John Goller was an American pioneer and the first blacksmith in Los Angeles, California. He owned a blacksmith and carriage-making business and was a member of the governing body of Los Angeles as well as a founder of the city's first gas company.
Louis Roeder (1835–1915) was a member of the governing body of Los Angeles, California, in the 19th century, who rose from being a pioneer blacksmith and carriage maker to one of the wealthiest landowners in the city.
Fenton Mercer Eurice Slaughter was an American soldier, pioneer, gold miner, mechanical engineer, farmer and politician. After serving in the Mexican-American War, he spent most of the rest of his life in California, where he became a successful farmer and politician.
Elihu Anthony was an American Alcalde, blacksmith, industrialist, abolitionist, postmaster, and minister. He is considered a founding father of the city of Santa Cruz. He also served as a member of the California State Assembly 6th District, 1880–1881. He was active within the anti-Chinese movement, but paradoxically he had also supported abolitionism.
Sarah L. Knox-Goodrich (1825–1903) was a women's rights activist who worked for women's suffrage in California in the late nineteenth century. Her first husband, William Knox, was a business man, banker, and state politician. Her second husband, Levi Goodrich, was an architect in Southern California. Knox-Goodrich used her wealth and her social position to push for equal employment, school suffrage, and voting rights.
Francis Doud was a California pioneer of 1849, a veteran soldier of the Mexican–American War, and a community builder. He established the Doud House in 1852, and acquired 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) along the seacoast south of Monterey, California in 1891 to create the Doud Ranch.
