Henry Morton Stanley – 1841-1904

Born John Rowlands out of wedlock in Wales, Morton later took the first and last names of the merchant who adopted him, Henry Hope Stanley. He served as a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War and in the U.S. Navy and U.S merchant marine, then worked as a journalist in the Far West. In 1867, James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, sent him to Africa to cover Britain’s war against King Tewodros II of Ethiopia. Bennett next sent him in search of the famed British missionary Dr. David Livingstone, who had disappeared in 1866 while looking for the source of the Nile. Stanley found Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871, greeting him with “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”