John Lawrence Sullivan was born to Irish immigrants Michael Sullivan and Catherine Kelly on October 15, 1858, in Boston's South End. Although he later claimed to have attended Boston College, college records do not confirm this, and his formal education likely ended at the age of fifteen. He began boxing in 1878 and was known as the "Boston Strong Boy." From 1882 to 1892, he was the American heavyweight champion. His most famous bout was the last bare-knuckle heavyweight championship with Jake Kilrain in Mississippi in 1889, which Sullivan won in seventy-five rounds. After losing a bout to James J. Corbett in 1892, Sullivan turned to the stage with a vaudeville act in which he read monologues and sometimes staged sparring exhibitions. He also owned a series of bars and a hotel in Boston, although he quit drinking in 1905 and became a temperance advocate. Sullivan was a popular public figure and became friends with Theodore Roosevelt, some of whose correspondence with Sullivan survives in this collection.

Sullivan's first marriage, to Annie Bates Bailey in 1883, ended in divorce in 1908 after a long separation. He remarried in 1910 to Katherine Harkins and retired from the stage in 1911, moving with Harkins to Abington, Massachusetts, where he died on February 2, 1918.

Sources

Cox, James. A. "The Great Fight: 'Mr. Jake' vs. John L. Sullivan." Smithsonian Dec. 1984: 152 on. Gale Biography in Context (GALE A3538503).

Davis, Luckett V. "Sullivan, John L." In American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press, Feb. 2000. Accessed January 28, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1900215

Isenbeg, Michael T. John L. Sullivan and His America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.