Leonard Raymond Nelligan Ashley was born on December 5, 1928, in Miami, Florida.

He is an American English language educator and writer. He came to McGill University at age 15 and earned his B. A. (English) in 1949 and his M. A. in 1950. In 1956, he earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Ashley became an instructor at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City (1953-1956) and the University of Rochester, New York (1958-1961). He was an instructor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (1961-1965), an assistant professor (1965-1968), associate professor (1968-1971), Professor of English (1972-1995) and Professor Emeritus (1995- ). He was also a part-time faculty member at the New School for Social Research, New York City (1962-1972). Aslley served as secretary of the International Linguistic Society (1980-1982) and later was on its board. He was vice president of Amici Linguarum and participated in the International Conferences on Onomastic Sciences in Europe. Ashley was a member of the United States Board on Geographical Names and a President Emeritus of The American Society of Geolinguistics. Aside from more traditional works on English drama, fiction, poetry, and books on onomastics and geolinguistics, he is also known for his series of popular dictionaries of the occult. He also served on the editorial board of various academic journals in the US and abroad. In 1998, he received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia Theological Seminary. Ashley has been listed as a noteworthy English language educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Margaret Eliza Ashmun was born on July 10, 1875, in Rural, Waupaca County, Wisconsin.

She was an American writer and poet. She graduated from Stevens Point State College and earned her Ph.B. from the University of Wisconsin in 1904, followed by her A.M. in 1908. She served as the head of the English Department at Stout Institute in Menomonie, Wisconsin, from 1904 to 1906, and was a member of the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin from 1907 to 1912. In 1912, she moved to New York and dedicated most of her time to writing from that point onward. While maintaining her home in Rural, she spent some winters in Madison and significant periods abroad. In 1928, she adopted a little girl named Mary Louise Ashmun (1928-1937). The death of Mary ten years later deeply affected her, causing great shock and grief. In 2009, Margaret Ashmun was recognized as a Notable Wisconsin Author by the RR Donnelley Literary Award. The village of Rural, Wisconsin, holds an annual Margaret Ashmun Day in mid-June to honour her legacy.

She died on March 15, 1940, in West Springfield, Massachusetts.

Dr. John Ashurst, Jr. was born ca. 1840 in Pennsylvania, USA.

He was an American surgeon. He was elected Vice-President of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1895. He was a Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and served as Chair of Surgery at Penn State University from 1889 to 1900. In 1867, he published a monograph, "Injuries of the spine."

C. Ashworth, Esq., was a manager of the Bank of Montreal in Toronto, Ontario, in the 1860s. In the 1880s and 1890s, he was manager of the Bank of Montreal in London, England.

Athanasios Asimakopulos was born in Montreal in 1930. He was educated at McGill University earning a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1953, and in Cambridge obtaining his Ph.D. in 1959. Athanasios Asimakopulos was a Lecturer in Economics and Political Science from 1956 to 1957 at McGill. From 1957 to 1959 he worked as an Assistant Professor at the Royal Military College. In 1959 he returned to McGill and became an assistant professor. Promoted to the position of associate professor in 1963, he became a full professor in 1966. In 1988 he was appointed William Dow Professor of Political Economy. He served as Chairman of the Department of Economics from 1974 to 1978. He wrote extensively on the work of such economic theorists as J.M. Keynes, Joan Robinson, and M. Kalecki. He was active in many professional associations and organizations. He held numerous fellowships and was a Visiting Professor and a Fellow at universities in the United States, England and Australia. From 1976 to 1990 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Athanasios Asimakopulos died in 1990.

John Askham was an English working-class poet who published five volumes of poetry. He was born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, the youngest child of a shoemaker, and attended school for about one year. Before he was ten, his family put him to work in the shoemaking trade. Subsequently he set up his own business, later becoming the librarian of the newly formed Literary Institute at Wellingborough.
In 1871, Askham was elected a member of the first town school board. Three years after, he became school attendance officer and sanitary inspector of the local board of health. Despite his heavy workload, Askham educated himself and started writing poetry. He composed his first verses at the age of twenty-five, and later contributed poems to local newspapers. The fidelity of his nature poetry was remarkable considering that he had few opportunities to enjoy country life. In later years Askham was disabled by paralysis and died in 1894.

John Erskine Askin was born in 1739 in Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

He was a fur trader, merchant, colonial and militia officer. He came to North America with the British Army in 1758. After the British took over New France, he entered the fur trade and operated a trading post at Fort Michilimackinac (Mackinaw City, Michigan). He became a commissary for the garrison and farmed. In 1767, Askin built a post at the Lake Superior end of Grand Portage, which became operational the following year. His post was among the first to establish Grand Portage as a major redistribution point of the fur trade to the Canadian Prairies and Athabasca country. From 1786 to 1789, he was part of a group of trading companies known as the Miamis Company. He was also involved in the shipping business and land speculation and was one of the partners involved in the Cuyahoga Purchase along the south shore of Lake Erie. In 1789, he was named a justice of the peace at Detroit. When Detroit was turned over to the Americans in 1796, he became a justice of the peace for the Western District and moved to Sandwich, now Windsor, Ontario, in 1802. Askin bought and sold Native American and African American slaves. He owned twenty-three enslaved people during his lifetime, one of them an Odawa woman named Monette or Manette, whom he freed in 1766. They had three children, John, Catherine, and Madeline. He also had one indentured servant.

In 1772, he married Marie Archange Barthe (1749–1820). He died in June 1815 in Sandwich, Essex County, Ontario.

Joseph S. Aspler is a retired Canadian research scientist at the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada in Pointe-Claire, Quebec. He is also a veteran reader of science fiction and an amateur photographer.