Biography
Born in Pontiac, Michigan, Andrew was the youngest child of Irving Hanscom, a pioneer of Macomb County, Michigan. He was sent to Detroit for elementary school, and later completed high school there, as well. At 17 Hanscom attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and during this period he served as first lieutenant of Company C., First Michigan Infantry, during the Mexican-American War. While in Mexico Hanscom commanded Thomas B. Cuming, which would be helpful again to him in the future.
After the war Hanscom came to Council Bluffs, Iowa and opened a mercantile. In 1854 he attended July 4 picnic during which the city was founded. That year he moved across the Missouri River and built a claim shack and small frame building near 15th and Farnam Streets in present-day Downtown Omaha. When Alfred Jones surveyed Omaha later that year he divided it into 320 blocks, after which point Hanscom discovered his claim had been reserved for schools. He quickly traded the land for a 400-acre (1.6 km2) claim belonging to Colonel Sam Bayliss. Late that year Hanscom was appointed colonel of the First Nebraska Regiment, and he helped found the Omaha Claim Club.
Read more about this topic: Andrew J. Hanscom
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)