McElroy, John Harmon: - John Harmon McElroy was born and raised in a small Pennsylvania town, and by working in its glass factory helped put himself through Princeton University (which makes an appearance in the first book of his Benjamin Franklin Detective series). Two of McElroy's German-born immigrant ancestors fought for American independence. He has a doctorate in American Literature from Duke University. In 1990-1992 McElroy and his wife planned and, with the help of the U.S. and Spanish governments, planted a grove of 500 redwood trees on the rainy northwest coast of Spain (Galicia) to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. In 2010 he walked the entire Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. John is a Professor Emeritus, University of Arizona, where, among other things, he created and taught the course Literature of the Early Republic for twenty years, which included Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. He also taught at Clemson University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and, as a Fulbright Professor of American Studies, universities in Spain (Salamanca) and Brazil (Santa Cataraina). In the summer of 1981 he taught in the English Seminar in Poznan, Poland. He and his wife, Onyria Herrera McElroy, author of best-selling medical dictionaries, were married in Havana, Cuba.