Baby name story: Larry Allen

Newspaper reporter Larry Allen (1908-1975) pictured in an Associated Press advertisement from mid-1942.
Larry Allen circa 1942

In February of 1942, a baby boy was born to Lura and Alfred Bowles of Carswell, West Virginia.

What did they name him?

Larry Allen — after Associated Press war correspondent Laurence Edmund “Larry” Allen, the “sea-going Associated Press war correspondent whose experiences with the British fleet in the Mediterranean [had] thrilled millions of newspaper readers” a month earlier.

Those “blow-by-blow action stories of Mediterranean warfare” were so thrilling in fact that, several months later, 33-year-old Larry Allen won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.

Interestingly, journalist Larry Allen was born (in 1908) with the name Lawrence Finzel. He was named after his father Lawrence Finzel, a “world champion coal miner.” As a teenager, “[d]etermined to carve out his own unique identity,” he altered the spelling of his first name. Sometime in the 1930s, after working in newspapers for several years, he changed his name again — adopting the surname Allen, and publishing stories under the nom de plume “Larry Allen.” (I’m not sure if the middle name Edmund was given at birth or added later on.)

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Unusual real name: Preserved Fish

Shipping merchant Preserved Fish (1766-1846)
Preserved Fish

Preserved Fish (1766-1846) had an interesting life, but he’s best remembered for having an interesting name.

Preserved — pronounced with three syllables: preh-ZUR-ved — was born a Quaker in Rhode Island. (Eighty years later, he died an Episcopalian in New York City.) He was one of at least ten men in the Fish family to have the Quaker name Preserved, which referred to being “preserved in a state of grace” or “preserved from sin.”

As a teen, he went to sea. By the age of 21, he’d become the captain of a whaler. Later on, he “realized that a fortune could be made in selling whale oil, but not in securing it, and in 1810 he went into the whale oil business.” He also got involved in other types of business — he “acquired ships and organized packet lines to Liverpool and London,” for instance. Later still he became a banker, and, “in 1826, he was one of twenty-eight brokers of the New York Stock Exchange Board, the nucleus of the New York Stock Exchange.”

Along the way, he married three times: his first wife was named Abigail, his second was named Mary, and his third was also a Mary.

What are your thoughts on the name Preserved?

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Baby name story: Marvin James

football field

In late 1941, Clifford “Cliff” Olson — coach of the football team at Pacific Lutheran University (near Tacoma, Washington) — adopted a baby boy.

He and his wife Ella named the baby Marvin James.

Why?

The Marvin was for Olson’s two “Marvelous Marvs,” Tommervik and Harshman, graduating seniors and the big stars of Northwest small college football the past two years. Marv (Tommygun) Tommervik has won a halfback’s berth on the Associated Press football team both the past two years and Fullback Harshman honorable mention.

The James was for Dave James, Tacoma sports writer.

From 1939 to 1941, PLU went on an 18-game winning streak — including a “16-13 upset victory in 1940 over then-major college power Gonzaga [that] catapulted Pacific Lutheran into the national spotlight.”

Clifford Olson, Marvel Harshman, and Marvin Tommervik were all inaugural inductees into the PLU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1990.

P.S. I love that Cliff’s headstone has a football and a helmet. :)

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Image: Adapted from New Meadowlands Stadium: Mezz Corner (cropped) by section215 under CC BY 2.0.

Babies named for Ulysses S. Grant

U.S. President Ulysses S Grant (1822-1885).
Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant is best remembered as a U.S. President…but he initially gained fame as a military leader during the American Civil War.

His victories for the Union — starting with the Battle of Fort Donelson in February of 1862 — led to a series of promotions that culminated in his being appointed commander of all Union armies in March of 1864. Ulysses S. Grant is the person to whom Confederate commander Robert E. Lee surrendered in April of 1865.

Three years after that, Grant was elected U.S. President. At 46 years old, he was, at that point, the youngest man ever elected president. His two-term presidency lasted from 1869 until 1877.

As you might imagine, Grant acquired many namesakes. Records indicate that thousands of baby boys were named “Ulysses Grant” or (more precisely) “Ulysses S. Grant” during the 1860s and 1870s. Some examples…

Those already in Grant families simply got “Ulysses S.” or some variant thereof (e.g., “Ulysses Sherman“) as given names.

Interestingly, though, Ulysses S. Grant himself was not born with the name “Ulysses S. Grant.”

His parents, Jesse Grant and Hannah Grant (née Simpson), didn’t have a name picked out when their first child arrived in 1822. He remained nameless for weeks. Finally, the couple got together with Hannah’s family to make a selection. Here’s how Jesse described the naming process:

When the question arose after his birth what he should be called, his mother and one of his aunts proposed Albert, for Albert Gallatin; another aunt proposed Theodore; his grandfather proposed Hiram, because he thought that was a handsome name. His grandmother […] was a great student of history, and had an enthusiastic admiration for the ancient commander Ulysses, and she urged that the babe should be named Ulysses. I seconded that, and he was christened Hiram Ulysses; but he was always called by the latter name, which he himself preferred when he got old enough to know about it.

(Other sources say that the names were put into a hat, and that “Ulysses” was drawn, but Jesse altered the name to “Hiram Ulysses” to please Hannah’s father.)

In 1839, Jesse wrote to Rep. Thomas Hamer — a former friend with whom he’d been quarreling — to request that Hamer nominate his teenage son, “H. Ulysses,” to be a cadet at the United States Military Academy. Hamer complied, but mistakenly wrote the boy’s name as “U. S. Grant.” Jesse guessed that Mr. Hamer, “knowing Mrs. Grant’s name was Simpson, and that we had a son named Simpson, somehow got the matter a little mixed in making the nomination.”

Ulysses was unable to get the mistake fixed while he was at West Point. After graduation, he simply adopted “Ulysses S. Grant” as the standard form of his name.

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