This is a short biography of famous and successful home schooled people; Peter Cooper, Pearl S. Buck and William Bryan. You can also find the biographies of other famous and brilliant people, who you wouldn’t imagine had been home schooled: Albert Einstein, Grandma Moses, Woodrow Wilson, President.
Peter Cooper - Inventor and tradesman
Peter Cooper was born in New York City in 1791. Peter did not attend a great deal of school. Instead, his time was spent working with his father in various industrial settings. During Peter’s youth, trades were considered more useful than education.
The trades Cooper became adept in included: hat-making, brewing and brick making, etc. His knowledge of machinery and manufacturing increased throughout the years.
Peter invented a machine for shaping wheel hubs, concocted a method of siphoning power from ocean tides, invented a rotary steam engine, unveiled America’s first steam locomotive,known as the Tom Thumb (1825),
Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb locomotive
patented a musical cradle, concocted a method for making salt., and obtained the very first American patent for the manufacture of gelatin (1845).
Cooper’s unselfish devotion and everlasting spirit lives on through his work. Cooper’s many ventures in life as an apprentice mechanic, inventor, and humanitarian continue to affect many of our lives till this day. Cooper gave the less fortunate an opportunity to afford education, he was a great pioneer of The Industrial Era manufacturing steel and was even responsible for laying communication cable across the ocean.
Pearl Buck, Author and humanitarian
Pearl S. Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu, was an award-winning American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932.
Pearl was born in West Virginia. When she was three months old her missionary parents took her to China. Pearl grew up bilingual, tutored in English by her mother and in classical Chinese by Mr. Kung.
In 1911, Pearl left China to attend Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia. Pearl became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.”
William Jennings Bryan - Politician
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician. Until age ten William was home-schooled. He studied the Bible and learned to read from the McGuffey Readers. Then he attended the Whipple Academy. He then went to Illinois College, graduating as valedictorian. He ran three times for president of the United States for the Democratic Party. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was one of the best known orators and lecturers of the era.
Because of his faith in the goodness and rightness of the common people, he was called “The Great Commoner.”
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