A person who is entitled by law or by the terms of a will to inherit the estate of another. Classified under: Nouns denoting people. Synonyms: heir; heritor; inheritor. Hypernyms (heir is a kind of...): receiver; recipient (a person who gets something)
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on April 17, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. Her parents were William and Temperance (Tempie); they divorced shortly after she was born. Ella and her mother moved to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with her mother s boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva.
Fitzgerald was then sent to a special reform school but didn't stay there long. By 1934, Ella was trying to make it on her own and living on the streets. Still harboring dreams of becoming an entertainer, she entered an amateur contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater.