Memorial Day Names: Baby naming in 1868
Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 and first observed on May 30 of that year, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. So this year, instead of looking back again at the names of Civil War generals and such, I thought it could be more enlightening to look instead at well-known people (with interesting names) who were born in 1868—giving us a bird’s-eye view of some aspects of post-Civil War baby naming, both in America and elsewhere.
GIRLS
ALEEN Cust, first British female veternarian
ALIDA B. Jones, early movie actress
ALMA Kruger, Shakespearean actress, later featured in Dr. Kildare movies
DIXIE Selden, American portrait painter
EDITH Holloway, British Woman’s chess champion
ELEANOR Porter, author of Pollyanna
ELLA Gaunt Smith, innovative doll maker, first to market black dolls in the South
EUGENIE Besserer, silent screen actress, played the mother in The Jazz Singer
EVANGELINE Smith, best known astrologer of her day
FLORA Call Disney, mother of Walt
HENRIETTA Swan Leavitt, American astronomer
HOPE Goddard Iselin, first woman to crew in the America’s Cup yacht race
JANE Avril, French can-can dancer made famous by Toulouse–Lautrec
JENNINGS Carmichael, Australian poet
KATTI (born Catherine) Møller, Norwegian feminist, children’s right advocate and pioneer of reproductive rights
LOYOLA O’Connor, early film actress
MARTHA Woolstein, first woman member of the American Pediatric Association
MAUD Humphrey, American commercial artist and mother of Bogey
MAUDE Turner Gordon, American stage and screen actress
PHILIPPA Fawcett, English mathematician
RHETA Childe Dorr, author and social worker
BOYS
ALONZO Clark, American politician, governor of Wyoming
AXEL Hägerström, Swedish philosopher
BAJO Topulli, Albanian freedom fighter
BERNARR Macfadden, early proponent of physical culture and bodybuilding; magazine publisher
BORIS Thomashefsky, one of the biggest stars of the Yiddish theater
CAI Yuanpei, influential Chinese educator
CAMILLO Olivetti, Italian engineer, founder of Olivetti & Co.
COMFORT A. Adams, important experimental engineer
CONSTANTINE I, King of Greece
CUNO Amiet, Swiss artist, a pioneer of modern art in Switzerland
EDGAR Lee Masters, major American poet, author of Spoon River Anthology
EDMOND Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac
ÉDOUARD Vuillard, major French painter and printmaker
EMANUEL Lasker, world chess champion for 27 years
ÉMILE Bernard, noted French Post-Impressionist painter
FELIX Hoffman, German chemist who invented aspirin—and heroin
GASTON Leroux, author of The Phantom of the Opera
HAMISH MacCunn, Scottish romantic composer
HARDEE Kirkland,silent screen actor and director
HARLEY Payne, pro baseball player who pitched for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms
HARRY Alonzo Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid
HARVEY Firestone, rubber tire baron
KORBINIAN Brodmann, important German neurologist
MAGNUS Hirschfeld, German physician and sex researcher and early gay rights activist
MAXIM (born Aleksei) Gorky, Russian author and a founder of socialist realism; political activist
MILES Poindexter, US Senator from Washington
REN Shields, American musician, co-wrote “In the Good Old Summertime.”
RHODY Hathaway, silent film actor
ROMAINE Fielding, early film actor
ROYAL S. Copeland, US Senator from New York
SCOTT Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”
SEWELL Ford, American novelist ad short story writer
SKYROCKET (born Samuel) Smith, Major League first baseman
SNITZ (!!!) Edwards, silent movie character actor
SOLON Borglum, American sculptor who worked on Mount Rushmore