Dexter Edgar Converse
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Dexter Edgar Converse (1829–1899) was a textile entrepreneur who was co-founder and namesake of Converse University. Converse was native of Vermont who had moved to Spartanburg prior to the American Civil War and had become a successful pioneer in the cotton mill industry, and served as the head of the Converse University's first board of directors and was among the school's founders and substantial donors.[1]
Dexter Edgar Converse was born in Swanton, Vermont to Louisa Twichell and Olin Converse, a wool manufacturer. Olin Converse was a descendant of Edward Convers, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who landed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1629 as part of the John Winthrop Fleet.[2] After his father's death in 1832, Dexter was raised by an uncle in Quebec who was also a woolen manufacturer.[3] When he was twenty-one, Converse went to work at a mill in Cohoes, New York with another uncle, Winslow Twichell, and while there married a cousin, Helen Twichell.[4]