William Foster (1885 - 1914)

William's immediate relatives including parents, siblings, partnerships and children in the Foster family tree.

William's Family

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We currently do not have photos of William Foster. Below are potential family photos that share William's last name or surname. Pictures really do say a thousand words. Add photos of William during various points of his life

Percy Walter Foster

Robert Samuel Foster 1902

Harry Foster Army Air Forces

Harry and Dorothy Foster Wedding

Carolyn Sue Foster

Irene May Inez (Foster) Johnson Family

Irene May Inez (Foster) Johnson

Dwayne E. Foster

The Lindsey Family, 1923

Bedford Foster Registration Card

Anni Foster

Delma Sue Jenkins - Foster-Casey

Joseph and Delma Sue Foster

Florence Edna (Duvall) Buchanan-Foster

Paul Leon Foster

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Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during William's lifetime

In 1885, in the year that William Foster was born, Germany's Karl Benz built the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which had an internal combustion engine. It is considered to be the world's first automobile. The Benz cost $150 - just under $4,000 in today's money.

In 1893, at the age of just 8 years old, William was alive when a songbook, called Song Stories for the Kindergarten, was published by sisters Patty and Mildred Hill. One of the songs included in the book was "Good Morning to All" - later the lyrics were changed and it became "Happy Birthday to You".

In 1899, when he was merely 14 years old, the meaning of Chinese "oracle bones" was rediscovered. Farmers in China had been turning up the bones in their fields for generations but most often they were ground up and sold as medicine. The chancellor of the Imperial Academy and a friend noticed, before they ground the bones, that they had writing. The bones had been used around the second millennium BC for divination.

In 1901, William was 16 years old when shortly after beginning his second term, President McKinley was assassinated by the self proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz. The last President to have served in the Civil War - he began as a private and ended the war as a brevet major - McKinley was a Republican. First elected in 1896, he was re-elected in 1900. Six months after the swearing in, McKinley was shot - and died of the gangrene that set in as a result.

In 1914, in the year of William Foster's passing, in August, the world's first red and green traffic lights were installed at the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. The electric traffic light had been invented by a policeman in Salt Lake City Utah in 1912.