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American Fur Company

(Encyclopedia)American Fur Company, chartered by John Jacob Astor (1763–1848) in 1808 to compete with the great fur-trading companies in Canada—the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. Astor's most ...

Forrest, Edwin

(Encyclopedia)Forrest, Edwin, 1806–72, American actor, b. Philadelphia. He was the first national idol of the American theater. He appeared at 14 as Young Norval in John Home's Douglas and gained experience suppo...

Boise, river, United States

(Encyclopedia)Boise, river, c.160 mi (260 km) long, rising in SW Idaho and flowing west to join the Snake River at the Oregon line. In 1811 the Boise River, originally called Reed's River, was explored by an expedi...

Parton, James

(Encyclopedia)Parton, James, 1822–91, American biographer, b. England. He came to the United States in 1827. In 1848 he joined the staff of N. P. Willis's Home Journal in New York City. His biographical writing b...

Billings, John Shaw

(Encyclopedia)Billings, John Shaw, 1838–1913, American surgeon and librarian, b. Indiana. In the Civil War he was medical inspector of the Army of the Potomac. After the war he was given charge of the Surgeon Gen...

Chodorow, Nancy

(Encyclopedia)Chodorow, Nancy chōdˈərōˌ [key], 1944–, American psychologist. A professor at the Univ. of California at Berkeley, Chodorow has extensively pursued the question of why women desire motherhood. ...

Mitford, Nancy

(Encyclopedia)Mitford, Nancy, 1904–73, English novelist and biographer, b. London. She managed a London bookshop during World War II and moved to Paris in 1945. Mitford and her five celebrated and politically div...

Wexler, Nancy

(Encyclopedia)Wexler, Nancy, 1945–, American geneticist and neuropsychologist, b. Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Univ. of Michigan, 1974. After her mother was diagnosed with Huntington's disease in 1968, her father, the...

Carolus-Duran

(Encyclopedia)Carolus-Duran kärôlüsˈ-düräNˈ [key], 1837–1917, French painter whose original name was Charles Auguste Émile Durand. He was influenced by Courbet and studied in Lille and Paris. In 1861 he w...

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