List of Famous people born in Massachusetts, United States of America

William Mason

First Name William
Last Name Mason
Born on January 24, 1829
Died on July 14, 1908 (aged 79)

William Mason was an American composer and pianist and a member of a musical family. His father was composer Lowell Mason, a leading figure in American church music, and his younger brother, Henry Mason, was a co-founder of the piano manufacturers Mason and Hamlin.

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Charles Crozat Converse

First Name Charles
Last Name Converse
Born on October 7, 1832
Died on October 18, 1918 (aged 86)

Charles Crozat Converse was an American attorney who also worked as a composer of church songs. He is notable for setting to music the words of Joseph Scriven to become the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus". Converse published an arrangement of "The Death of Minnehaha", with words by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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Lester Dorr

First Name Lester
Last Name Dorr
Born on May 8, 1893
Died on August 25, 1980 (aged 87)

Lester Dorr was an American actor who between 1917 and 1975 appeared in well over 500 productions on stage, in feature films and shorts, and in televised plays and weekly series. Even a sampling from his extensive filmography attests to his versatility as a supporting actor and his reliability as a bit player. His roles are at times credited, but more often they are uncredited, consisting of peripheral characters who have limited dialogue or appear briefly in a wide range of occupations such as newspaper reporters, hotel clerks and bellhops, taxi drivers, salesmen, police officers, military personnel, waiters, and bartenders.

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Edgar Leonard

First Name Edgar
Last Name Leonard
Born on June 19, 1881
Died on October 7, 1948 (aged 67)

Edgar Welch Leonard was a Harvard graduate and male tennis player from the United States.

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Louis Wolff

First Name Louis
Last Name Wolff
Born on January 1, 1898
Died on June 28, 1972 (aged 74)

Louis Wolff was an American cardiologist. He described the eponymously named Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome with Doctors John Parkinson (1885–1976) and Paul Dudley White (1886–1973).

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Benjamin Lee Whorf

First Name Benjamin
Last Name Whorf
Born on April 24, 1897
Died on July 26, 1941 (aged 44)

Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist and fire prevention engineer. Whorf is widely known as an advocate for the idea that differences between the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world. This principle has frequently been called the "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", after him and his mentor Edward Sapir, but Whorf called it the principle of linguistic relativity, because he saw the idea as having implications similar to Einstein's principle of physical relativity. The idea, however, follows from post-Hegelian 19th century philosophy, especially from Wilhelm von Humboldt; and from Wilhelm Wundt's Völkerpsychologie.

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Amos Nourse

First Name Amos
Last Name Nourse
Born on December 17, 1794
Died on April 7, 1877 (aged 82)

Amos Nourse was a medical doctor who became a U.S. Senator from the state of Maine for a very short term. Born in Bolton, Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard College in 1812 and from Harvard Medical School in 1817. At first settling in Wiscasset, and subsequently in Hallowell, Maine, he finally removed to Bath, Maine in 1845. He was collector of customs at Bath from 1845 and 1846 and commenced practice of medicine in that city. He was lecturer on obstetrics at Bowdoin College from 1846 to 1854, and professor of that branch from 1855 to 1866.

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Hiram Sibley

First Name Hiram
Born on February 6, 1807
Died on July 12, 1888 (aged 81)

Hiram Sibley, was an American industrialist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who was a pioneer of the telegraph in the United States.

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Harry Woodburn Chase

First Name Harry
Last Name Chase
Born on April 11, 1883
Died on April 20, 1955 (aged 72)

Harry Woodburn Chase was the 12th President of the University of North Carolina (1919–1930), the 7th President of the University of Illinois (1930–1933), and the 8th President of New York University (1933–1951).

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Oliver Chace

First Name Oliver
Last Name Chace
Born on August 24, 1769
Died on May 21, 1852 (aged 82)

Oliver Chace was an American 18th & 19th-century businessman. He was the founder of several New England textile manufacturing companies in the early 19th century, including the Valley Falls Company, the original antecedent of Berkshire Hathaway, which as of 2019 is one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world.

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