John F Hilbert

Walter Penn Shipley: Philadelphia's Friend of Chess

Walter Penn Shipley was crucial to the development of chess in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He organized correspondence chess in the United States in the 1890s, was a talented player and was a friend of world champions and contenders. He served as the president of the...

The Tragic Life and Short Chess Career of James A. Leonard, 1841-1862

The Civil War affected the entire American landscape in ways not always fully considered. It determined the political future of a nation--but also its scientific and cultural development. The war cost America many of its best and brightest in every realm. James A. Leonard was one such loss: a brilli...

Emil Kemeny: A Life in Chess

Emil Kemeny appeared on the American chess scene in 1890, a Hungarian chess player on the Lower East Side who had difficulty with English. Within a decade he was considered one of the country's finest chess players and writers. He dominated chess in both Philadelphia and Chicago, where he lived betw...

Julius Finn: A Chess Master's Life in America, 1871-1931

Julius Finn was born in Russian Poland, and came to New York in 1887 at the age of 16. From a humble start as a street peddler on the Lower East Side, Finn swiftly rose to become New York's champion chess master and one of the country's best blindfold chess entertainers. Finn's chess success contrib...

Albert Beauregard Hodges: The Man Chess Made

Albert Beauregard Hodges is a legend among chess aficionados. One of the most well-known American chess players of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he played an important role in transforming chess from a pleasant pastime into a social institution. This work provides an in-depth biography of ...

William H.K. Pollock: A Chess Biography

During his first years in America, William Henry Krause Pollock participated in some of the most important American chess events of the 19th century. Pollock played matches against strong players like Charles Moehle, John L. McCutcheon, Jackson W. Showalter and Eugene Delmar. This biography analyzes...

Persuasive Public Speaking: A Liberal Arts Approach

Walter Penn Shipley: Philadelphia's Friend of Chess

Albert Beauregard Hodges: The Man Chess Made

Speak With Comfort