Thomas Wheeler (born around 1620, England - died 1686, Concord, Massachusetts) was a colonial soldier of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and writer.^[1] He emigrated from England to the North American colonies in 1642. In 1644 he was living in Fairfield, Connecticut.^[2] In 1675 he took part in King Philip's War against the Wampanoag and Nipmuck tribes.

In the 1650s Wheeler was a trader; in 1657 he purchased the right to trade with the Native American tribes for twenty five pounds. Around 1661 he was one of the first people to purchase land in the Ockocangansett plantation, which later became the town of Middleborough, Massachusetts. He was made a Lieutenant on October 12, 1669 and a Captain in 1671.^[3]

At the beginning of the hostilities he was assigned as military escort to Cpt. Edward Hutchinson and together with him, led his men into an ambush, carried out by the Nipmucks under Muttawmp and Matoonas, at Brookfield that has become known as Wheeler's Surprise. His horse was shot out from under him and he was seriously wounded,^[4] but eventually survived the battle. His son, also named Thomas Wheeler was also wounded, in the loins and arm, but also managed to survive.^[5] Thomas Wheeler (senior) eventually wrote an account of the engagement which was first published in 1676 by Samuel Green, under the title "A Thankfulle Remembrence of Gods Mercy. To several Persons at Quabaug or BROOKFIELD".^[6] Wheeler's work exemplifies the Puritan conception of heroism, in which a person's piety is their virtue while the credit for the victory in battle is ascribed to God.^[7]

He died in 1686 due to complications from the wounds received at the battle of Brookfield.^[3]

References[link]

Works cited[link]

• Leo Bonfanti, "Biographies and Legends of the New England Indians, Volume III", New England Historical Series, Pride Publications, 1981.
• William Peterfield Trent, "Colonial prose and poetry, Volume 1", T. Y. Crowell & co., 1903, [1].
• Richard Slotkin, James K. Folsom, "So dreadfull a judgment: Puritan responses to King Philip's War, 1676-1677", Wesleyan University Press, 1978, [2].
• New England Historic Genealogical Society, The New England historical and genealogical register, Volume 38, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1884, [3].
• Albert Gallatin Wheeler, American College of Genealogy, "The genealogical and encyclopedic history of the Wheeler family in America", American College of Genealogy, 1914, [4].

Tom Wheeler is an American television writer and producer. He served as the executive producer and show runner for the NBC superhero series The Cape.^[1]

Career[link]

Television work[link]

Wheeler began his television career writing and executive producing the ABC mini-series Empire in 2005. He then wrote two television pilots, The World According to Barnes and Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas, neither of which were taken to series. His new series The Cape, about a police officer framed for a crime he didn't commit who takes on the guise of his son's favorite comic book hero in order to clear his name, premiered on NBC on January 9, 2011.^[2]

Film work[link]

He wrote the screenplay for Puss in Boots, a spin-off of the Shrek franchise.^[1]

He is currently co-writing the screenplay for upcoming DreamWorks Animation's animated film Trollhunters together with film's co-director Guillermo del Toro.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tom Wheeler on Twitter
• Tom Wheeler at the Internet Movie Database

Ted Cruz
Texas Solicitor General
In office 2003 – May 2008
Preceded by	Julie Parsley
Succeeded by	James C. Ho
Personal details
Born	(1970-12-22) December 22, 1970 (age 41) Calgary, Alberta, Canada[1]
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Heidi Suzanne Cruz
Children	Caroline Camille Catherine Christiane
Residence	Houston, Texas
Alma mater	Princeton University Harvard Law School
Profession	Attorney
Religion	Southern Baptist[2]
Website	tedcruz.org

Rafael Edward Cruz, known as Ted Cruz (born December 22, 1970), is the former Solicitor General of the U.S. state of Texas, a position which he held from 2003 to May 2008. Cruz was appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in the post thus far in Texas history. He is currently a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he leads the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.^[3]

Cruz is a candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison.^[4]

Cruz previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, from 2004-2009 Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

Early life and education[link]

Cruz was born to a Cuban-American father and an American mother in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents were working in the petroleum business.^[1] His father was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba until he escaped to freedom in Texas in 1957.^[5]

Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas,^[6] and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.

Cruz earned his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel as one of North America's top-ranked parliamentary debaters, winning the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.^[7] In 1992, he was named Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton) by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.^[7] Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.^[8]

Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.^[9]

Legal career[link]

Cruz also served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, then-Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.^[10] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.^[11]

Cruz has authored more than eighty briefs before the United States Supreme Court and presented forty-three oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.

In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of thirty-one states in defense of the principle that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.^[12] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools and the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.^[13]

Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.^[14]

2012 U.S. Senate election[link]

Cruz speaking to values voters in October 2011.

On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position.^[4]

Cruz has been endorsed by David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders,^[15] the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee,^[16] Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState,^[17] the FreedomWorks for America super PAC,^[18] Princeton University professor Robert P. George,^[19] nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin,^[20] Former Attorney General Edwin Meese,^[21] Tea Party Express,^[22] Young Conservatives of Texas,^[23] U.S. Senators Jim DeMint,^[24] Mike Lee,^[25] Rand Paul,^[26] and Pat Toomey.^[27] He has also been endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Congressman Ron Paul,^[28] as well as former United States Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.^[29] Cruz faces opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary.

Personal life[link]

Cruz was born and spent the first four years of his life in Calgary before his parents returned to Houston. His father was jailed and tortured by the Batista regime and fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution ^[30] but "didn't know Castro was a Communist" and later became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent".^[31] He moved to Austin, Texas, in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear.^[32] The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. Cruz’s mother, who was from Houston, was the first person in her family ever to go to college. She earned a math degree at Rice University in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell. "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."^[2]

Cruz and his wife, Heidi Suzanne Cruz, have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane.

Honors and awards[link]

• "America's Leading Lawyers for Business," Chambers USA (2009 & 2010)
• "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America," National Law Journal (2008)
• "25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century," Texas Lawyer (2010)
• "20 Young Hispanic Americans on the Rise," Newsweek Magazine (1999)
• Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus, Harvard Law School
• Primary Editor, Harvard Law Review
• Executive Editor, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
• Founding Editor, Harvard Latino Law Review
• John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, Harvard Law School

See also[link]

	Law portal
	Texas portal

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ted Cruz

• Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate campaign website
• "Cruz Control: A Republican star rises in Texas," National Review, Mark Hemingway, May 4, 2009
• Ted Cruz’s Morgan Lewis law firm bio
• "Ted Cruz, hatching a site, expects Abbott to run for a different office," Austin American-Statesman, W. Gardner Selby, March 4, 2009
• "Justices listen to a key voice," The National Law Journal (cover story), Marcia Coyle, April 7, 2008
• Announcement of Ted Cruz's departure as Solicitor General
• "In state politics, his star is rising," Austin American-Statesman (front page story), Mark Lisheron, January 15, 2006
• Debating the Supreme Court's Heller decision with the DC Attorney General on News Hour with Jim Lehrer (video)
• "A Day in the life of... Ted Cruz," Texas Bar Journal, Kim Davey, Vol. 69, No. 7

Thomas Nash (baptised 20 June 1593 – died 4 April 1647)^[1] was the first husband of William Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth Barnard. He lived most of his life in Stratford-upon-Avon, and was the dominant male figure amongst Shakespeare's senior family line after the death of Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, in 1635.^[2]

Birth[link]

Nash was baptised at the parish church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon and entered in the register as “Thomas filius Anthonij Nash generosi”, i.e. “Thomas, son of Anthony Nash gentleman”. His mother's maiden name was Mary Baugh and she came from Twyning, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.^[3] His father Anthony, a friend of Shakespeare and farmer of his tithes, was born in Old Stratford.

Life[link]

Nash entered Lincoln's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court in London, on 15 May 1616 at the age of 13, and was called to the bar on 25 November 1623, but there's no evidence that he ever went on to practice law.^[4] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that he may however have taken over a rôle that his father held in being an agent for Sir John Hubaud, a High Sheriff of Warwickshire; but Sir John Hubaud died in 1583, ten years before Thomas was born.^[4]

When Thomas's father died in 1622, he was bequeathed properties in Stratford: the Bear Inn (opposite the Swan) and a house in Bridge Street, and a piece of land called “the Butt Close by the Avon” where burghers used to shoot at archery butts.^[5][6] Thomas was an executor to his father's will. It appears that Thomas held on to the Bear Inn: his father-in-law, Dr. John Hall, once treated someone that he called one of Thomas's servants “lying at the Bear”, presumably indicating that he was a publican or worker at that inn. Hall's first treatment for the poor heavily jaundiced servant elicited “seven Vomits”, and this and a series of further treatments “cured him perfectly”.^[7]

Nash was part of the 1633 trimvirate, along with John Hall and the vicar of Harbury Richard Watts, that was to oversee the wranglings associated with Thomas Quiney and his lease on a house called The Cage.^[8] Nash apparently lived in the house now known as Nash's House, before moving in with his mother-in-law next door at New Place after the death of Dr. Hall in 1635. Nash is known to have been a declared royalist, a supporter of Charles I and indeed a donor to the king's cause to the tune of £100,^[9] which may have led to Queen Henrietta Maria and the king's entourage staying with Thomas and his family at New Place in July 1643.^[10]

According to Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, Nash's coat of arms was emblazoned “double quarterly of four, First, 1 and 4 argent on a chevron between three ravens' heads erased azure, a pellet between 4 cross-crosslets sable, for Nash; 2 and 3 sable a buck's head caboshed argent attired or, between his horns a cross patée, and across his mouth an arrow, Bulstrode. Second, 1 and 4, for Hall, 2 and 3 Shakespeare”.^[11]

Marriage[link]

Nash married Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's granddaughter, on 22 April 1626 at Holy Trinity church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Thomas de Quincey conjectured that this date was chosen to celebrate the birthday of Elizabeth's famous grandfather, who was baptised on 26 April and whose birthday is celebrated out of tradition alone on 23 April. Being 32 years old at the time of the marriage, Nash was 14 years older than his 18 year old bride.^[12] They had no children, and Elizabeth was the last direct descendent of Shakespeare.^[13]

Death[link]

Thomas Nash died in 1647, at the age of 53. In the will that he made on 20 August 1642 he bequeathed memorial rings (a common practice at the time) to Thomas and Judith Quiney, Shakespeare's son-in-law and daughter.^[14] Less straightforwardly, he also bequeathed property that did not belong to him, for example leaving New Place, the property of his mother-in-law Susanna Hall, to his cousin Edward Nash.^[14] Indeed, Nash even refers to Susanna in a letter as “Mrs. Hall, my mother-in-law, who lives with me”.^[2] Susanna successfully retained the house, which Shakespeare had bought in 1597, after some legal wrangling.

Plaque on Nash's grave.

Nash was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity, immediately to the right of Shakespeare's as one faces the altar. To be accorded this honour required some kind of position recognised by the church as fitting, such as holding parish tithes. His burial inscription and epitaph reads:^[15]

HEERE RESTETH YE BODY OF THOMAS
NASHE, ESQ. HE MAR. ELIZABETH, THE
DAVG: & HEIRE OF IOHN HALLE, GENT.
HE DIED APRIL 4. A. 1647, AGED 53.

Fata manent omnes, hunc non virtute carentum
vt ncque diuitiis, abstulit atra dies;
Abstulit, at referet lux ultima; siste viator,
si peritura paras per male parta peris.

His widow Elizabeth remarried two years later.

References[link]