Some Notable Fosters


Not all Fosters are dead. What follows is my eclectic list of prominent Fosters around today. Below that list you will find some of the noted Fosters from the past.

Andrew Foster, a deaf African American from Alabama, started schools for the deaf in Africa. 

Bob Foster from New Mexico is recognized by most boxing critics as one of the greatest light heavyweight boxing champions in history.

Brendan Foster, born near Newcastle, has been a distance runner, TV athletics commentator, and is a founder of the Great North Run.

Cecil Foster is a Barbados-born witer who emigrated to Canada.

Sir Christopher Foster has been a professor of economics and adviser to both Labor and Tory ministers. 

David Foster, a native of British Columbia, is one of the modst successful and influential music producers today.  He won the Producer of the Year Title for Whitney Houston's soundtrack in The Bodyguard.

David Foster has been, like his father George, a world champion axeman.  From Tasmania, he has also won his native Australian axeman of the year title a record nine times.

Foster & Allen began in the 1970’s when Mick Foster and Tony Allen were playing in country music bands around Ireland.  Mick Foster hails from County Kildare.

Fred Foster, from North Carolina is an American songwriter, record producer, and founder of Monument Records.  He co-wrote with Kris Kristofferson Me and Bobby McGee. 

Gipp Foster, based in British Columbia, is well-known as a radio broadcaster, author, and poet throughout Canada.

Hal Foster, Professor of Art at Princeton University, is an internationally renowned author on post-modernism in art. 

Jack Foster, a real estate magnate, founded the planned community of Foster City near San Francisco in the 1960's.

Jodie Foster is a leading American actress.

John Foster is one of Britain’s best-loved and highly regarded children's poets. 

Lawrence Foster, born in Los Angeles of Romanian parentage, is a distinguished American conductor.

Margaret Forster, from Carlisle and married to the writer Hunter Davies, is an author in her own right.  Her works include the family memoirs, Hidden Lives and Precious Lives.

Sir Norman (now Baron) Foster, born to a working class family in Manchester, emerged in the 1960’s as one of England’s leading architects. 
Richard Foster gave his name to bananas Foster, a confection of bananas, brown sugar and rum flambe served over vanilla ice cream, which was first served at Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans in the early 1950's.
Roy Foster from Waterford in Ireland is the Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University.
Toby Foster is a stand-up comedian in Yorkshire.


And here is a list of some noted Fosters of the past:

Ann Foster was convicted of witchcraft in 1692 during the Salem witch trials.  

Sir Augustus Foster was the English diplomat in Washington at the time of the War of 1812.  He had to leave when the British sacked the city.

Balthazar Foster was one of the few distinguished physicians who went on to have a political career, as an MP for Ilkeston in Derbyshire in the late 1800's.
 
Charles Foster was a controversial American psychic medium in the 1850’s and 1860’s. 

Dobshon Foster was a wealthy English Quaker from Lancaster active in the slave trade.

Doctor Foster, the subject of a children's nursery rhyme, is said to be based on King Edward I.

Dorothy Forster is believed to haunt the Lord Crewe Arms in Blanchland, Northumbria.  

Lady Elizabeth Foster was a notorious courtesan of the Regency age.  She is most remembered for her "menage a trois" with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

E.M. Forster, the English author of novels such as Howard's End and A Passage To India, was born in London in 1879. 

Georg Foster was the pen-name of Johann Forster of German extraction.  He travelled with Captain Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific and later became a prolific writer on a veriety of topics.

Hal Foster from Nova Scotia in Canada migrated to the US and is often called “the father of the adventure strip.”  He started in the 1930’s with the Tarzan comic strip.  But his most remembered strip is the Prince Valiant series. 

James Foster built his Worcestershire company John Bradley & Co into one of the largest iron makers in England in the first half of the nineteenth century. 

Joe Foster from Bolton in Lancashire devised the first running shoes with spikes in 1895.  His grandsons, Joe and Jeffrey Foster, started the running shoe company Reebok in 1958.

Sir John Foster was the last Speaker of the Irish Parliament (from 1785 to 1800).   

Sir John Forster rode with Richard the Lion Heart to the Crusades, saved his life at Acre, and was granted Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland as his reward. 

Sir John Forster of Bamburgh was Warden of the Middle Marches of the Border during Elizabethan times.

John Foster, born in a small farmhouse near Halifax, became well-known in the early 1800’s for his essays and moral discourses.

John Foster was a prominent textile manufacturer in the mid-nineteenth century from his Yorkshire mill near Halifax. 

John Forster left Newcastle for London to pursue a career as a journalist.  He was a friend and advisor to Charles Dickens.

Josiah Forster started a Quaker school at Tottenham Green in London in the eartly eighteenth century which was continued by his son and grandson.

Mary Foster owned and showcased Huddersfield Ben, a Yorkshire terrier, in the 1870’s and did much to popularize the breed of dog.

Mary Foster was a long-time resident of Hawaii and, on her death in 1930, donated her gardens to the city of Honolulu.  These gardens are now known as the Foster botanical gardens. 

Maud Foster owned land near Boston in Lincolnshire in Elizabethan times.  Her name is commemmorated in the Maud Foster windmill built there in 1819.

Myles Birket Foster, from a Quaker family in Newcastle, became a well-known water colorist and book illustrator in the nineteenth century.

Sir Robert Foster was Lord Chief Justice of England from 1660 to 1663.

Stephen Foster from Pittsburgh was a popular American songwriter of the 1840’s and 1850’s.  His songs such as Oh! Susanna, Beautiful Dreamer, and Swanee River continue to be popular. 

Tom Forster was the last of the Bamburgh dynasty.  His backing of the 1715 Jacobite Revolt proved very costly.

Vere Foster was an English philanthropist in Ireland in the late nineteenth century.

William Foster from Lincolnshire founded the company which built the first tank in World War 1.


William and Ralph Foster, brothers from New York, set up a beer plant in Melbourne in 1888 which gave its name to the Australian beer Fosters.