Gutzon Borglum

John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American artist and sculptor. He is most associated with his creation of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. He was associated with other public works of art, including a bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt and now held in the United States Capitol Crypt in Washington, D.C..

The son of DanishAmerican immigrants, Gutzon Borglum was born in 1867 in St. Charles in what was then Idaho Territory. Borglum was a child of Mormon polygamy. His father, Jens Mller Haugaard Brglum , had two wives when he lived in Idaho Gutzons mother, Christina Mikkelsen Borglum and Gutzons mothers sister, who was Jenss first wife. Jens Borglum decided to leave Mormonism and moved to Omaha, Nebraska where polygamy was both illegal and taboo he left Gutzons mother and took his first wife with him. Jens Borglum worked mainly as a woodcarver before leaving Idaho to attend the Saint Louis Homeopathic Medical College in Saint Louis, Missouri. Upon his graduation from the Missouri Medical College in 1874, Dr. Borglum moved the family to Fremont, Nebraska, where he established a medical practice. Gutzon Borglum remained in Fremont until 1882, when his father enrolled him in St. Marys College, Kansas.

Source: Wikipedia