Oliver G. Ricketson, Jr. (1894-1952) was born in September 19 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was five years old, his family moved to Cumberland Island, Georgia. In 1916 he entered Harvard Medical School, but enlisted in the navy the next year at the outbreak of World War I. He returned to school after the war, but only remained a year. He spent most of his life traveling and working on architectural surveys on the Yucatan peninsula and other international regions. He focused much of his time on the excavations of Mayan ruins. Ricketson died in Bar Harbor, Maine, on October 17, 1952 (a complete biography is available in S.K. Lothrop's article, 'Oliver Garrison Ricketson, Jr.' in
, Vol. 19, No. 1 (July 1953), 69-72.