Gutzon Borglum

In 1889, Gutzon Borglum married Elizabeth Janes. She was ex-wife of J. W. Putnam and 19 years older to him. The couple faced marital problems and got separated in 1903. However, they officially got divorced only in 1908.

On May 20, 1909, Borglum married his second wife, Mary Montgomery Williams. The couple together had two sons and a daughter, including Lincoln and Mary Ellis (Mel) Borglum Vhay.

Borglum died on March 6, 1941 due to complications during a surgery. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park located in Glendale, California. Later on, his wife was also interred beside him.

Gutzon Borglum, a child of Mormon polygamy, was born on March 25, 1867 in St. Charles, Idaho Territory, U.S.A. His father, Jens Møller Haugaard Børglum, had two wives: Gutzon's mother, Christina Mikkelsen, and Gutzon's mother's sister Ida.

Borglum had a younger brother named Solon who was also an established sculptor. He also had step-siblings.

He was enrolled at the St. Mary's College, Kansas and later relocated to Omaha, Nebraska to attend Creighton Preparatory School. There he also served in a machine shop.

Gutzon Borglum initially worked at a machine shop and then started sculpting. In 1901, he sculpted saints as well as apostles for new Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. In 1906, he made a sculpture with a group that went on to be accepted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1908, he won a competition and was allocated the task to build a statue of Civil War General Philip Sheridan. This statue was then placed in the Sheridan Circle in Washington. D.C.

Soon after this, Borglum created the sculpture Rabboni at the Rock Creek Cemetery as a grave site for Ffoulke Family. He then became one of the drafters of the Czechoslovak declaration of independence in 1918.

In 1919, one of his most unusual pieces, ‘Aviator,’ was completed. This was the memorial of the World War I official James R. McConnell and is located at the University of Virginia.

In the year 1923, another version of the General Philip Sheridan statue was erected in Chicago, Illinois. Two years later, the American artist moved to Texas to work on the monument to trail drivers that was commissioned by the Trail Drivers Association. The monument stands in front of the Trail Drivers Memorial Hall and Texas Pioneer, next to Witte Museum in San Antonio.

Gutzon Borglum was involved in the carving of the Stone Mountain in Georgia. In 1915, he was approached by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who wanted him to carve bust of General Robert E. Lee on the mountain's rockface. Carving of the mountain officially began in June 1923 and the following year, Lee's head was unveiled to a large crowd.

In the year 1915, Memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson that is located at Baker Cottage, Saranac Lake was also unveiled by Borglum.

He built the statue of the American Civil War’s General Daniel Butterfield at the Sakura Park in Manhattan.

Borglum created a memorial to Vanzetti and Sacco in 1928. Its plaster cast now resides in the Boston Public Library. The memorial Start Westward of the United States (located in Marietta, Ohio) was also sculpted by Borglum.

Another design of the American artist is the North Carolina Monument that resides on the Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg Battlefield in the south-central Pennsylvania.