25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Elmira, New York (and Chemung County)

Aerial view of downtown Elmira along the Chemung River in New York’s Southern Tier. Photo: Jacob Boomsma / Shutterstock

Elmira and Chemung County occupy a distinctive place in New York’s Southern Tier, where the Chemung River, railroads, industry, aviation, education, and reform movements all helped shape the region’s history. Chemung County promotes Elmira as the “Soaring Capital of America” because nearby Harris Hill has hosted national soaring competitions since 1930. Elmira College, founded in 1855, also holds an important place in American higher education as the first institution in the United States to offer women degrees with requirements equivalent to those at men’s colleges.

For this list, “from Elmira and Chemung County” includes people who were born or raised here as well as a small number of figures whose long-term residence and life’s work became inseparable from the community. That distinction is important in a place where Mark Twain spent more than twenty summers writing at Quarry Farm, John W. Jones built a remarkable life after escaping slavery, and Thomas K. Beecher served Elmira for nearly half a century. Brief visits, temporary work assignments, and business ties alone are not enough for inclusion.

1. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Mark Twain married Elmira native Olivia Langdon in 1870 and spent more than twenty summers with his family at Quarry Farm on East Hill. In an octagonal study overlooking the Chemung Valley, Twain wrote major portions of some of his best-known books. He is buried with members of his family in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
• Claim to Fame: One of the defining figures in American literature, Twain wrote major portions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court during his Elmira summers.

2. Ernie Davis (“The Elmira Express”)

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Ernie Davis moved to Elmira at age twelve and became a standout in football, basketball, and baseball at Elmira Free Academy. His success there earned him the nickname “The Elmira Express.”
• Claim to Fame: Davis starred at Syracuse University and became the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy in 1961. He was selected first overall in the 1962 NFL Draft, but leukemia prevented him from playing professionally before his death at age twenty-three.

3. Eileen Collins

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Eileen Collins was born and raised in Elmira, graduated from Elmira Free Academy in 1974, and earned an associate degree from Corning Community College before beginning her military aviation career.
• Claim to Fame: Collins became the first woman to pilot a Space Shuttle mission when she flew STS-63 in 1995 and the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission when she led STS-93 aboard Columbia in 1999.

4. Tommy Hilfiger

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Tommy Hilfiger was born in Elmira and grew up there. As a high school student in 1969, he began selling bell-bottom jeans he had purchased in New York City and soon opened his first store, People’s Place, in his hometown.
• Claim to Fame: Hilfiger launched his namesake fashion brand in 1985 and built it into one of the world’s most recognizable American lifestyle brands, known for its interpretation of classic American sportswear and pop-culture influences.

5. Hal Roach

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Harold Eugene Roach was born in Elmira in 1892 and grew up in the city, attending several local schools before leaving home as a teenager.
• Claim to Fame: Roach became one of Hollywood’s pioneering comedy producers and founded Hal Roach Studios. His productions included the Our Gang comedies and the films that established Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as one of motion-picture comedy’s most enduring teams.

6. Olivia Langdon Clemens

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Olivia Louise Langdon was born and raised in Elmira in a prominent reform-minded family. She married Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, in the Langdon family home in 1870 and remained deeply connected to Elmira throughout her life.
• Claim to Fame: Olivia was Twain’s wife, intellectual partner, and trusted reader. Her education, moral outlook, editorial judgment, and family connections played an important role in Twain’s personal life and writing career.

7. Beth Phoenix

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Professional wrestler Beth Phoenix was born in Elmira and attended Notre Dame High School, where she became the first female member of the school’s varsity wrestling team.
• Claim to Fame: Phoenix became one of WWE’s best-known women’s wrestlers, winning both the Women’s Championship and Divas Championship. She was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2017.

8. Brian Williams

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Brian Williams was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, but his family moved to Elmira shortly afterward. Williams has said that he spent the first eight or nine years of his life in Elmira before the family returned to New Jersey.
• Claim to Fame: Williams became a nationally known television journalist, serving as anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 2004 to 2015 and later hosting MSNBC’s The 11th Hour.

9. John W. Jones

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: John W. Jones escaped slavery in Virginia and eventually settled in Elmira, where he became sexton of the First Baptist Church and Woodlawn Cemetery. He lived in Elmira for the rest of his life.
• Claim to Fame: Jones became an important Underground Railroad stationmaster who helped approximately 800 freedom seekers travel north without any being captured or returned to slavery. During the Civil War, he also supervised the burial of 2,973 Confederate prisoners who died at the Elmira prison camp and kept exceptionally detailed records of their graves.

10. Charles Tomlinson Griffes

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Charles Tomlinson Griffes was born in Elmira in 1884 and received his early musical training there before traveling to Berlin to study piano and composition.
• Claim to Fame: Griffes became an important early-20th-century American composer whose work moved from German Romantic influences toward a highly individual form of musical Impressionism. His best-known compositions include The White Peacock, The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan, and his Piano Sonata.

11. Bob Waterfield

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Bob Waterfield was born in Elmira in 1920 before his family later moved to California.
• Claim to Fame: Waterfield became a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, defensive back, kicker, and punter for the Cleveland and Los Angeles Rams. He was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player as a rookie in 1945 and helped the Rams win championships in 1945 and 1951.

12. Tedd Arnold

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Children’s author and illustrator Tedd Arnold was born in Elmira in 1949.
• Claim to Fame: Arnold became the bestselling creator of the Fly Guy series and the author and illustrator of books including Green Wilma and Parts. His books Hi! Fly Guy and I Spy Fly Guy! received Theodor Seuss Geisel Honors.

13. Molly Huddle

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Molly Huddle is an Elmira native and graduated from Notre Dame High School in Elmira in 2002 before competing for the University of Notre Dame.
• Claim to Fame: Huddle represented the United States at the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games and became a multiple-time U.S. champion in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. She also held the American record in the 10,000 meters.

14. Kirt Manwaring

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Kirt Manwaring was born in Elmira in 1965 before going on to play college baseball at Coastal Carolina.
• Claim to Fame: Manwaring spent thirteen seasons as a Major League Baseball catcher, primarily with the San Francisco Giants. In 1993, he became the first Giants catcher to win a Gold Glove Award.

15. Joey Sindelar

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Joey Sindelar was raised in Horseheads and learned the game of golf from his father. He became a standout junior and high school golfer while growing up in Chemung County.
• Claim to Fame: Sindelar became a three-time All-American at Ohio State and later won seven tournaments on the PGA Tour. He was inducted into the New York State Golf Association Hall of Fame in 2019.

16. Clyde Fitch

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: William Clyde Fitch was born in Elmira in 1865 before spending part of his childhood elsewhere in New York.
• Claim to Fame: Fitch became one of the most successful American playwrights of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over roughly two decades, he wrote dozens of original plays and adaptations and at one point had four plays running on Broadway at the same time.

17. Harriet Maxwell Converse

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Harriet Maxwell Converse was born in Elmira in 1836 into a family with longstanding connections to the Seneca Nation.
• Claim to Fame: Converse became a poet, folklorist, and advocate for the Six Nations. She was adopted into the Snipe Clan of the Seneca Nation and spent years collecting and preserving Haudenosaunee traditions, legends, and cultural material.

18. Henry J. Friendly

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Henry Jacob Friendly was born in Elmira in 1903 and spent his early years there before attending Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
• Claim to Fame: Friendly served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 until his death in 1986 and served as the court’s chief judge from 1971 to 1973. Earlier in his career, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

19. J. Sloat Fassett

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Jacob Sloat Fassett was born in Elmira in 1853, attended local public schools, practiced law in Elmira, served as Chemung County district attorney, and remained active in the city’s banking and business life.
• Claim to Fame: Fassett served in the New York State Senate from 1884 to 1891, including a period as president pro tempore, and represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1905 to 1911.

20. Lewis E. Lawes

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Lewis Edward Lawes was born in Elmira in 1883 and grew up in a family connected to prison work. His father worked at the Elmira Reformatory, and Lawes began his own corrections career in New York State.
• Claim to Fame: Lawes served as warden of Sing Sing from 1920 to 1941. He became nationally known as an advocate of prison rehabilitation and an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, and he wrote the memoir Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing.

21. Thomas K. Beecher

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Thomas Kinnicut Beecher came to Elmira in 1854 and served as pastor of Park Church until his death in 1900. His forty-six years in the city made him one of Elmira’s most influential religious and civic figures.
• Claim to Fame: The brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Beecher became known for a practical, community-centered approach to religion. He also served on the Elmira Board of Education, ministered during the Civil War, and co-officiated the 1870 wedding of Mark Twain and Olivia Langdon.

22. Alexander S. Diven

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Alexander Samuel Diven established his legal career in Elmira and became deeply involved in the city’s civic, railroad, political, and military affairs.
• Claim to Fame: Diven served in the U.S. House of Representatives and helped raise the 107th New York Infantry during the Civil War. He served as lieutenant colonel of the regiment, which fought at Antietam and other major engagements, and later became a prominent railroad executive.

23. Clara Cook

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Clara “Babe” Cook was born in Pine City in Chemung County and was identified with Elmira as her hometown during her professional baseball career.
• Claim to Fame: Cook was one of the original sixty players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League when it began in 1943. The left-handed pitcher played for several clubs and was a member of the Milwaukee Chicks championship team in 1944.

24. Jason Butler Harner

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Actor Jason Butler Harner was born in Elmira in 1970.
• Claim to Fame: Harner built a substantial career in theater, film, and television, appearing on Broadway in productions including The Coast of Utopia and The Crucible. Television audiences also know him from roles in series including Ozark.

25. Jeff Plate

• Elmira / Chemung County Connection: Jeff Plate was born in nearby Montour Falls but grew up on a farm in Horseheads in Chemung County, where he began playing drums after a childhood hip injury ended his early plans to pursue baseball.
• Claim to Fame: Plate became a prominent hard-rock and heavy-metal drummer through his work with Savatage and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He has also performed with Metal Church and other projects during a career spanning several decades.

Quick Reference: 25 Famous People From Elmira and Chemung County

Readers interested in more notable people from around the state can continue with our 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Upstate New York, 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Went to College in Upstate New York, and 25 NFL Players You Didn’t Know Came From Upstate New York.