Armstrong Sperry Biography

Call It Courage About the Author

Armstrong W. Sperry was born on November 7, 1897, in New Haven, Connecticut. As a boy, he was captivated by his great-grandfather's stories about the South Seas. With America's entry into World War I in 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He attended the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1918, the Art Students League in New York from 1919 to 1921, and spent the following year studying art in Paris.

A book by Frederick O'Brien, White Shadows in the South Seas, reawakened Sperry's childhood dreams and after two years working at an advertising agency in New York, he joined the Kaimiloa expedition as an assistant ethnologist for the Bishop Museum of Honolulu.

Sperry sailed among the islands of the South Pacific for two years, studying the languages, legends, and ancient chants of the Polynesians. When he returned to the United States he began working...
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