Famous/Prominent Corys

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Corys who have achieved prominence in the United States have been the following:

William Ellis Cory | Harvey Cory | Wendell Reid Corey | Charles Barney Cory | Irwin Corey
Jeff Corey | Eleanor Cory | George Cory | Peter deCarteret Cory

Captain Asa Howe Cory (May 31, 1814 – June 12, 1892) (Harpole/Northampton Corys)

Asa Howe Cory, founder of Coryville, newspaper editor and publisher, was a captain of Company H in the 58th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Asa Howe Cory, son of Thomas Robbins Cory and Leytta Howe, was born in Sullivan, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, May 31, 1814 Sullivan, PA. He died June 12, 1892 in Coryville, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools.

His father died when he was a boy.  He began his business career in Wellsboro, Tioga county, where he published the Phoenix for a period of two years. He came to Smethport, and purchased the McKean County Journal, in September,1837, and changed its name to the Beacon, and published that journal in this place for about three years when he sold the office to J. B. Oviatt. Although Mr. Cory had retired from active journalism he was identified with the McKean county press for many years.

In 1838 Mr. Cory  married Lucy, daughter of Hon. John Holmes.  The children of this union were Asa Orson Cory, Nancy Cory, and Ella Camilla Cory

Asa was elected as Road Commissioner in Smethport, Pennsylvania in 1848.

Like Thomas Kane, in 1861 Asa Cory organized a regiment for the Civil War, Co. H, Fifty-eighth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers and became its captain. He served with the Union Army from October 1, 1861 until he was forced by severe frostbite to resign on August 21, 1862. He was a member of Eldred Post, No. 158, G.A.R.

Mr. Cory was a member of the United Brethren Church, and it was largely through his efforts that the church at Coryville was built. He was a genial and companionable gentleman and had the respect and good will of all who knew him.

He was postmaster at Coryville for 20 years, and performed the duty pertaining to that office in a most acceptable manner.

He finally settled on the farm at Coryville where he continued to reside until the day of his death.

William Ellis Cory (4 May 1866-11 May 1934) (John 1 Database)

William Ellis Cory was born 4 May 1866 in Braddock, Allegheny Co., PA (near Pittsburgh) and began work in the steel mills at the age of 16.  A brilliant metallurgist, he became President of the Carnegie Steel Company from 1901 to 1903 and then became President of the United States Steel Company from 1903 to 1911.

He married early in life, 1 Dec 1883 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Co., PA, Laura B. Cook, the daughter of a steelworker, and they had a son, Alan Lyle Corey, born 6 Aug 1889 in Braddock, Allegheny Co., PA. Alan died 21 Feb 1970 in New York.

His career closely followed that of Charles Michael Schwab. In 1897 he succeeded Mr. Schwab as superintendent of Homestead Steel Works. In 1901 when Mr. Schwab left the presidency of Carnegie Steel Co. to become U. S. Steel's first president, Mr. Corey followed him as head of Carnegie. He succeeded Charles M. Schwab in 1903 as President of the U. S. Steel Corporation at $100,000 a year, then a record salary for a corporation executive in the U. S. He held the position until 1911. In 1915 he formed and headed Midvale Steel & Ordnance Co. as a rival to Mr. Schwab's Bethlehem Steel Corp.

The first class passengers on the ill fated Titanic included William Ellis Corey, ex-President of the United States Steel Corporation, and a close friend and ally of J. P. Morgan, whose IMM combine ultimately owned both the Olympic and Titanic. Corey’s life was eerily akin to that of John Jacob Astor, then embarking on the sister ship.

Two years later, 1905,  he abandoned his wife Laura  of 23 years after seeing Miss Maybell Gilman, 23, acting in The Mocking Bird. In 1905 Andrew Carnegie gave a small dinner party at which he attempted to have the Coreys reconcile but he was unsuccessful. Soon afterwards Mrs. Charles M. Schwab, expressing the view of all of social Pittsburgh, was reported to have said to Corey, “If you divorce Mrs. Corey and marry that actress my doors will be closed to you forever.” He settled $1,000,000 on his first wife, "consented" to her divorcing him the following year on 6 July 1906 in Reno. One of his sisters testified at the hearing that he was unfit to be given custody of his sixteen year-old son, while another sister was in Paris helping Mabell prepare for her wedding (she and Mabell were both voice students of famous opera star Jean de Reszke).

He moved to New York from Pittsburgh, as subsequently with Astor.  Corey was finally able to overcome the objections of his parents and sister after he gave his mother $250,000 in U.S. Steel stock as well as a farm outside Philadelphia where one of his sisters was also to live. Although there were persistent rumors that Corey would be forced to give up the presidency of U. S. Steel because of negative publicity, it was finally determined that he was too valuable to the company. Mabelle Gilman arrived in New York City from Paris on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse on 1 May 1914 and joined her mother and two sisters, Pearl and Eunice. Mabelle was married to William E. Corey on 14 May 1907 at the Hotel Gotham by a Congregationalist minister after they could not find a Catholic or Episcopal priest to perform the ceremony (he later returned the fee and asked his fellow ministers for forgiveness for having wed the couple).

They first leased a mansion at 803 Fifth Avenue then purchased 991 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of 80th Street (now the home of the American Irish Historical Society) – close to the Astor pile. Corey gave his wife as a wedding present a beautiful chateau outside Paris, the Villa de Vilgenis, which had once belonged to Louis de Bourbon, the Prince de Condé, and was the site of the death of the youngest brother of Napoleon I, Jerome Bonaparte (whose first wife was a beautiful American heiress, Betsey Patterson of Baltimore). There were rumors that Mabelle was seen there riding naked on horseback as the sun was rising. The home was to remain in the Corey family until 1950 when it was expropriated by Air France. Corey was also reported to have given his new wife one million dollars as well as valuable jewels as a wedding present.  He resigned from the Presidency of the U. S. Steel Corporation shortly afterwards, allegedly at the request of the Directors.

Armed with money and a high profile, Mabelle entertained lavishly. The English writer and actor Beverley Nichols noted in his diary, “Lunch at Claridge’s with Mabelle Corey, a rattling American who had collected the King of Greece, the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Elmleigh, Lady Birkenhead, Lady Alexander Haig and me.”

He retired in 1923 when Bethlehem bought Midvale. The same year Mabelle divorced her husband in Paris in November and retained her French chateau where she entertained wounded U. S. soldiers during the War. She charged desertion.

William Ellis Corey died 11 May 1934 in New York, NY of pneumonia.

Harvey Cory (27 Mar 1883-1966?) (John 1 Database)

Harvey Cory was born on 27 Mar 1883 in Selma, Autauga Co, AL.  President of the "Cory Glass Coffee Brewer Corp.", manufactures of the famous Cory Class Coffee Brewer.

Harvey Cory and Margaret Maud Markell were married on 27 Nov 1906 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Co, PA. Margaret Maud Markell1 was born about 1885.

Harvey Cory and Margaret Maud Markell had one child, Elizabeth Cory,  Feb 1908 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Co, PA.

He moved to Chicago where he invented and manufactured the "Cory Glass Coffee Brewer".  Harvey Cory founded "Harvey Cory's Glass Coffee Brewer Corp.," later named Cory Corp., in 1933. The Company's subsequent coffee percolators led the market for half a century.

The first patent filed by Harvey Cory for a vacuum coffee brewer was in 1933, and was quickly followed by a series of new designs, many of which focused on peripheral design elements of the brewers - handles, covers, filters, and so forth. His 1934 patent illustrates both the "Fast-Flo" filter which shipped with many early Cory brewers, as well as an alternate design which showed up later on vacuum pots sold by General Electric. It is interesting to note that what is arguably the most significant innovation ascribed to Cory, namely the glass filter rod, was not invented by Harvey Cory himself, but by Raymond Kell of the MacBeth Evans Glass Company in 1932. The familiar Cory design was patented in 1939, while the similar Silex "Lox-In" glass filter was not submitted for patent until 1946.

In 1942, when the founder Harvey Cory retired, James Alsdorf and a group of friends scraped up enough money to buy control of the company.

He died about 1966 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co, CA.

Wendell Reid Corey (March 20, 1914 – November 8, 1968) (Harpole/Northampton Corys - DNA)

Wendell Reid Corey was an American actor and politician. He was born in Dracut, Massachusetts, the son of Milton Rothwell Corey (October 24, 1879 – October 23, 1951) and Julia Etta McKenney (April 11, 1882 – June 16, 1947). His father was a Congregationalist clergyman. Wendell was educated in Springfield.

Corey began his acting career on the stage, doing a number of productions in summer stock. While appearing with a Works Progress Administration theatre company in the late 1930s, he met his future wife, Alice Wiley. They had one son and three daughters, Jonathan, Jennifer, Bonnie Alice, and Robin.

His Broadway debut was in Comes the Revelation (1942). After appearing in a number of supporting roles, he scored his first hit as a cynical newspaperman in Elmer Rice's comedy Dream Girl (1945). While appearing in the play, Corey was seen by producer Hal Wallis, who persuaded him to sign a contract with Paramount and pursue a motion picture career in Hollywood.

His movie debut was playing a gangster in Desert Fury (1947). Corey appeared in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and a year later in Holiday Affair. He starred in The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), and in Harriet Craig, which was released the same year. His other movies include Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), The Big Knife (1955), The Rainmaker (1956)  and Loving You (1957).

He starred with Casey Walters in the weekly television programs Harbor Command (1957-1958). Thereafter, he co-starred with in The Nanette Fabray Show (1961), and in the lead role in the medical drama, The Eleventh Hour (1962-1963).

Corey also made guest star appearances on a number of programs, including Target: The Corruptors!, Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Untouchables, Burke's Law, Perry Mason, The Road West, and The Wild Wild West.

Corey served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1961 to 1963 and was a member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild. A Republican campaigner in national politics since 1956, Corey was elected to the Santa Monica City Council in April 1965. The conservative politician ran for the California seat in the United States Congress in 1966, but lost the primary election. He was still a councilman at the time of his death.

He died at age fifty-four at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, of cirrhosis of the liver as a result of alcoholism. He is interred in Washington Cemetery in Washington, Massachusetts.

Wendell Corey has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in TV at 6328 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Charles Barney Cory (January 31, 1857 – July 31, 1921) (Bristol Corys - William Database)

As an American ornithologist and golfer, he was a Honorary Curator of the Boston Society of Natural History and from 1895 was non resident Curator of Ontology at the field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, he was head of his department at his death in 1921. He established one of the first bird sanctuaries in the United states at Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Charles Barney Cory was born in Boston. His father had made a fortune from a large import business, ensuring that his son never had to work. At the age of sixteen he developed an interest in ornithology and began a skin collection. Due to his ability to travel anywhere he wished this soon became the best collection of birds of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in existence.

Cory briefly attended Harvard and the Boston University School of Law but soon left to continue his travelling. In 1883 he was one of the forty-eight ornithologists invited to become Founders of the American Ornithologists' Union. When Cory's collection of 19,000 bird specimens became too large to keep in his house he donated them to The Field Museum in Chicago, and he was given the position of Curator of Ornithology. Cory's collection of 600 ornithological volumes were purchased by Edward E. Ayer in 1894, and in turn donated to the museum. Cory lost his entire fortune in 1906, and took a salaried position at the museum as Curator of Zoology, remaining there for the rest of his life.

He wrote many books, including The Birds of Haiti and San Domingo (1885), The Birds of the West Indies (1889) and The Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin (1909). His last major work was the four-part Catalogue of the Birds of the Americas, which was completed after his death by Carl Edward Hellmayr.

Charles Barney Cory was the first person to describe Cory's Shearwater as a species. It had previously been described by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli in 1769, but he had believed it to be a race of another shearwater.

Cory participated in the 1904 Summer Olympics as a golfer. He competed in the individual event but did not finish.

Irwin Corey (born July 29, 1914, Brooklyn, New York)

"Professor" Irwin Corey is an American comic, film actor and left-wing political activist, who is often billed as "The World's Foremost Authority". He introduced his unscripted, improvisational style of stand-up comedy at Enrico Banducci's San Francisco club the hungry i.

Irwin Corey was born in 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. Poverty stricken, his parents were forced to place him and his five siblings in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York, where Corey remained until the age of 13, when he rode the rails out to California. During the Great Depression, he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and while working his way back East, became a featherweight Golden Gloves boxing champion.

Corey has always supported left-wing politics, and has appeared in support of Cuban children, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party, which resulted in his eventual Hollywood blacklisting in the 1950s, the effects of which he says still linger on to this day. (Corey never returned to Late Night with David Letterman after his first appearance in 1982, which he claimed was a result of the blacklist still being in effect.) During the 1960 election, Corey campaigned for president on Hugh Hefner's Playboy ticket.

He accepted the National Book Award Fiction Citation on behalf of Thomas Pynchon for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. He is also briefly mentioned in Chapter 22 of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Friday, but as "the World's Greatest Authority."

Irwin Corey resides in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City. He has been married since circa 1940 to his wife, Fran. The Coreys have one son, Richard, a painter, and a grandson named Amadeo

Eleanor Cory (8 September 1943, Englewood, New Jersey)

An American Composer.  She studied at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, New England Conservatory and Columbia University. Her composition teachers include Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bulent Arel and Meyer Kupferman. Cory teaches at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY, and has taught at Yale University, Baruch College, Manhattan School of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, Brooklyn College and The New School for Social Research. She resides in New York City with her husband, composer Ed Harsh and their son Andrew.

Eleanor Cory's work has been recognized by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Fromm Foundation of Harvard University, Aaron Copland Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Morse Grant of Yale University, MacDowell Colony, and PSC-CUNY Research Foundation. She has received an American Composers Alliance Recording Award, the Miriam Gideon Award from the International Association of Women in Music, as well as prizes from the Hollybush, Kucyna, and Music of Changes International Competitions, and the Davenport, and New Jersey Guild of Composers Competitions.

Her music is recorded on three solo CDs: Chasing Time (Albany CD 1031, 2008) Of Mere Being (CRI, 2002) and Images, (Soundspells, 1996) as well as on the CRI American Masters Series: Eleanor Cory and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (CRI CD 621); ACA Recording Award Winners (CRI SD 459); and The Music of Eeanor Cory and Edward Cohen (CRI SD 542).

George C. Cory, Jr. ( 3 August 1930,  Syracuse, N. Y.)

An American Composer.  He studied with Ernest Bloch at Univ. of California. During his army service in 1943-45, he was chapel organist at the Presidio of Monterey. He was music director, Gilbert and Sullivan Repertory Company, San Francisco; assistant to Gian-Carlo Menotti, 1946-50; arranger, conductor, pianist in San Francisco and throughout the U.S.

WORKS: Theatre: Lysistrata , musical version of Aristophane's play; Songs: The drcywned wife , text by Robert Horan; Music I heard with you , text by Conrad Aiken; And this shall be for music , text by R. L. Stevenson; Another America , text Douglass Cross; Keyboard: sonatina for piano; Pastorale and toccata-finale for organ; many popular songs including: I left my heart in San Francisco (Grammy award, 1963), and Carry me back to old Manhattan

Peter deCarteret Cory, CC, QC (born October 25, 1925, Windsor, Ontario)

Peter deCarteret Cory was a puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1989 to 1999.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, the son of Andrew and Mildred (Beresford Howe) Cory, he was educated at the University of Western Ontario (Assumption) receiving his BA in 1947 and at Osgoode Hall Law School receiving his law degree in 1950. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1950. As a pilot in the RCAF, he served overseas with 6th Bomber Group. He was appointed to the Queen's Counsel in 1963. He practiced law with Holden, Murdoch and was elected a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1971.

He is past chairman of the Ontario Civil Liberties Section of the Canadian Bar Association, past president of the County of York Law Association, past National Director of the Canadian Bar Association, and past president of the Advocates' Society.

He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario in 1974, the Court of Appeal for Ontario in 1981, and was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada on February 1, 1989. He is an Honorary Colonel of the 426 (T) Training Squadron. He retired from the Supreme Court on June 1, 1999. He served as the 11th Chancellor of York University from 2004 to 2008.

In 2002 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Following his retirement, Cory was appointed to conduct an independent inquiry into six particular deaths during 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland. The Cory Collusion Inquiry was established to investigate allegations of collusion between security forces and paramilitaries in those cases.

He was pre-deceased by first wife Edith Nash (with whom he had three children: Christopher, Andrew, and Robert) and in 2007 wed Mary Dayton.