Nathan W. Tracy (September 26, 1841 - February 19, 1919) was an American religious evangelist and temperance speaker active in the late 19th century. Tracy was born in Cumberland, Maryland. He relocated to Ohio as a young man, where he found work as a fruit dealer. During the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) he served in Ohio, being discharged with an unspecified 'disability' in 1863. In 1871 he announced himself a doctor and began selling quack medicines under the brand 'California Vegetable Tincture and Blood Searcher'. By 1880 he had reinvented himself as the 'Kentucky Temperance Evangelist.' His earliest Temperance lectures date to about 1880 and continue to be advertised in newspapers until February of 1913. Despite the glow of virtue surrounding his life, deeper research suggests that Tracy was a man of questionable morals. An 1889 news article in the Lima Daily Times (Thursday Sept 26, 1889) describes how his two sons, Roy and Bob, 14 and 12, respectively, ran away from home, where they claim to have been regularly abused by their 'ferocious father' Tracy, and their stepmother, his second wife. He had a third son, in 1878, named Robin (1878 - 1943), and a daughter Faith Virginia Tracy (1897 - 1943). At the time, they were living in Bellefontaine, Ohio. More than once, he ran afoul of other Temperance and religious leaders, who publicly denounced him as fraud. Tracy traveled widely, but most of his work focused on Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Tracy died in Sandusky, Ohio at age 78. More by this mapmaker...

Charles Shober (February 1831 - c. 1900) was a German-American lithographer and painter. Shober was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1854. He established himself in Philadelphia, at 17 Minor Street, where fellow lithographers and map engravers George Worley and Benjamin Mathias, also worked. His first lithograph in America appeared in an 1855 issue of The Horticulturist. In 1857, he partnered with Charles Reen to establish 'Reen and Shober' at 5 South Sixth Street, Philadelphia. The partners relocated their business to Chicago (106 Lake Street) in 1859. Reen left the firm in 1859 and Charles took a new partner, August Roth, printing under the imprint of 'Charles Shober'. They met with considerable success, until 1871, when like many Chicago businesses, the Great Fire laid them low. After the fire, he took over management and partial ownership of the Chicago Lithographic Company, which had been founded some years earlier by Louis Kurtz and Edward Carqueville. Kurtz's interest in the firm was acquired by Shober and it was renamed 'Charles Shober and Company'. Sometime after 1876, the firm's name changed to 'Shober Lithograph Company', and then in 1877, to 'Shober and Carqueville Lithograph Company'. Despite infighting, the firm prospered, printing views, posters, maps, trade cards, and sheet music. In 1887, after a prolonged dispute with Carqueville, Shober left the firm. He traveled briefly then took a position as president of the Chicago Bank Note Company. Shober's son died in a tragic suicide in 1896, after which, Shober seems to have vanished from professional life. He appears in the Chicago directory as late as 1900. Learn More...