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Alton
Alton , city (1990 pop. 32,905), Madison co., SW Ill., on bluffs of the Mississippi River 5 mi (8.1 km) above its confluence with the Missouri; inc. 1837. Alton is a shipping and industrial center, and there are oil refineries nearby. Food products, lime, crushed stone, lumber, crystal, paperboard, ...
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Alton Brooks Parker
Alton Brooks Parker 1852-1926, American jurist, U.S. presidential candidate (1904), b. Cortland, N.Y. He practiced law in Kingston, N.Y., and was (1877-85) surrogate of Ulster co., N.Y. He became important in state Democratic politics and successfully managed (1885) the campaign of David B. Hill fo...
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Elijah Parish Lovejoy
Elijah Parish Lovejoy 1802-37, American abolitionist, b. Albion, Maine, grad. Waterville (now Colby) College, 1826, and later studied theology at Princeton. In 1833 he became editor of the Observer, a Presbyterian weekly in St. Louis. His antislavery views (he advocated gradual emancipation) beca...
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Robert Schuller
Robert Schuller 1926-, American Protestant minister and television evangelist, b. Alton, Iowa. Schuller gained attention (1955) when he used a drive-in theater to meet the needs of his expanding Los Angeles congregation. His Reformed Church in America congregation is now housed in a multimillion do...
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Francis Marion Drake
Francis Marion Drake 1830-1903, Union army officer in the Civil War, railroad president, and governor of Iowa (1896-98), b. Rushville, Ill. He helped defend St. Joseph, Mo., against Confederate forces under the command of Gen. Sterling Price. As lieutenant colonel of an Iowa regiment he fought with...
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Miles Davis
Miles Davis 1926-91, American jazz musician, b. Alton, Ill. Rising to prominence with the birth of modern jazz in the mid-1940s, when he was a sideman in Charlie Parker 's bop quintet, Davis became a dominant force in jazz trumpet. He was influential in the development of "cool" jazz in 1949-5...
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Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller (Alton Glenn Miller), 1904-44, American jazz trombonist, bandleader, and composer, b. Clarinda, Iowa. Playing in Ben Pollack's band by 1927, he was a freelance musician in New York City during the 1930s. He formed his own big band in 1938, and it soon became one of swing's most popular...
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Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley 1819-75, English author and clergyman. Ordained in 1842, he became vicar of Eversley in Hampshire in 1844. From 1848 to 1852 he published tracts advocating Christian socialism . These views were embodied in his first two novels, Alton Locke (1850) and Yeast (1851), both of whi...
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Jane Austen
Jane Austen , 1775-1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at "Steventon," her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first novels, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, were written, although they were not pu...
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William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan , 1860-1925, American political leader, b. Salem, Ill. Although the nation consistently rejected him for the presidency, it eventually adopted many of the reforms he urged—the graduated federal income tax, popular election of senators, woman suffrage, public knowledge of...
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