Theodore Dreiser (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)

Early Life

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was born August 27, 1871, in Terre Haute, Indiana, the eleventh of a dozen children. His father, John Paul Dreiser, was a German Catholic immigrant who eloped with and married, in 1851, the teenage Sarah Schanab, daughter of a Moravian farm family living near Dayton, Ohio. A weaver by trade, John Paul prospered in Sullivan, Indiana, where, in 1870, the family’s initial good fortune disastrously ended. A fire destroyed John Paul’s woolen mill; while he was rebuilding the mill, a heavy beam fell on his head, seriously injuring him....

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