Gilbert Monell Hitchcock was born in Omaha, Nebraska on September 18, 1859. His father, Phineas W. Hitchcock, was prominent in Nebraska politics, and served as United States Senator from Nebraska between 1871 and 1877. He was educated in the city’s public schools and for two years attended the gymnasium (high school) in Baden-Baden, Germany.
George W. Norris
George W. Norris was born in 1861 in York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio. When he was only three years old, both his older brother and his father died leaving his mother, Mary Magdalene Norris, to raise and provide for George and his six sisters. At the time, Mary Norris was forty-six years old and pregnant for the twelfth time. The Norris family farmed and lived in near poverty.
Edward Joseph Flanagan
Edward Joseph Flanagan was born in rural west central Ireland. He was the eighth of eleven children, a gifted, frail child who often devoted the long hours of tending his family’s sheep and cattle and reading and prayer. Although poor, his parents were determined to provide Edward with education sufficient for him to become a priest.
Edward Creighton
Edward Creighton was born in Ohio in 1820, to James and Bridget Creighton, the fifth of nine children. His parents had both emigrated from Ireland. Creighton attended country schools, but found that his education was lacking and pushed himself to learn as much as he could on his own.
Dwight Palmer Griswold
Dwight Palmer Griswold (1893-1954) was born November 23, 1893, in Harrison, Nebraska. He received his early education in the Harrison, Ainsworth, and Gordon Public Schools. He graduated from Kearney Military Academy in 1910, and enrolled at Nebraska Wesleyan University in the fall.
Chimney Rock
Chimney Rock is a prominent geological rock formation in Morrill County in western Nebraska about four miles from Bayard, Nebraska. The “chimney” rises 300 to 350 feet above its conical base and the entire formation stands almost 500 feet above the surrounding North Platte River valley.
Charles Edwin Bessey
Charles Edwin Bessey was born to Adnah and Margaret Bessey in a log house on a farm in Milton, Ohio in 1845. The Bessey family was deeply religious. Bessy’s father provided most of his early education, and by the time he was seventeen, Bessey had earned his teaching license.
Bess Streeter Aldrich
Bess Streeter Aldrich was born in 1881 to a pioneer family in Cedar Falls, Iowa. A writer since early childhood, she won a writing contest at age fourteen and another at seventeen. After graduating from Iowa State Normal School (now the University of Northern Iowa), she taught school in Marshalltown, Iowa, and in Salt Lake City, Utah.