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Early Republic
Born 1780-1819 — expansion west, the market revolution and the road to disunion.
–1699
Colonial era
7
1700–1779
Founding era
34
1780–1819
Early Republic
64
1820–1864
Antebellum & Civil War era
110
1865–1899
Industrial & Progressive era
125
1900–1929
Early 20th century
238
1930–1949
Mid-20th century
204
1950–1969
Late 20th century
113
1970–
Contemporary era
46
64 people, oldest first
The people
Henry Clay 1777–1852Government & PoliticsSenator and statesman known as the Great Compromiser for his role in preserving the Union.Roger B. Taney 1777–1864Government & PoliticsChief justice whose Court shaped federalism but is principally remembered for the disastrous Dred Scott decision.Zebulon Pike 1779–1813Frontier & SportArmy officer who led expeditions to the Southwest and after whom Pikes Peak is named.John C. Calhoun 1782–1850Crime & NotorietyVice president and theorist of slavery and states’ rights whose doctrines intensified sectional conflict.Martin Van Buren 1782–1862Government & PoliticsEighth president who helped build the Democratic Party machine and governed through the Panic of 1837.Daniel Webster 1782–1852Government & PoliticsSenator and orator whose speeches on the Union and Constitution are among the greatest in history.Washington Irving 1783–1859Arts & LettersEarly American storyteller whose Sketch Book gave the country Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow.Zachary Taylor 1784–1850Government & PoliticsWar hero elected twelfth president who opposed extending slavery into western territories.John James Audubon 1785–1851Reform & RightsNaturalist and illustrator whose Birds of America shaped American ornithology and the society bearing his name.Davy Crockett 1786–1836Frontier & SportFrontiersman, soldier, and politician who became a folk hero of the American frontier.Winfield Scott 1786–1866Government & PoliticsCommanding general whose long career, Mexico City campaign, and Anaconda Plan shaped nineteenth-century U.S. military strategy.Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet 1787–1851Ideas & MediaFounded the first permanent American school for deaf students.Emma Willard 1787–1870Ideas & MediaWomen's education reformer who founded the Troy Female Seminary, a model for women's higher education.Sacagawea 1788–1812Frontier & SportShoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the Louisiana Territory.John Tyler 1790–1862Government & PoliticsFirst vice president to assume the presidency on a president's death and to annex Texas.James Buchanan 1791–1868Government & PoliticsFifteenth president who failed to halt Southern secession in the months before the Civil War.Samuel Morse 1791–1872Technology & BuildingPainter and inventor who developed the telegraph and Morse code, enabling instant long-distance communication.Thaddeus Stevens 1792–1868Government & PoliticsRadical Republican leader who drove congressional abolition, civil-rights measures, and a transformative vision of Reconstruction.Lucretia Mott 1793–1880Reform & RightsAbolitionist and women’s-rights organizer who helped convene the Seneca Falls Convention.Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794–1877Business & LaborShipping and railroad magnate whose empire made him one of the wealthiest Americans in history.James K. Polk 1795–1849Government & PoliticsEleventh president whose expansionist policies added the Southwest and Oregon to the United States.Horace Mann 1796–1859Ideas & MediaReformist who championed public education and is considered the father of the American public school system.Sojourner Truth 1797–1883Reform & RightsAbolitionist and women's rights activist whose Ain't I a Woman? speech became a rallying cry for equality.Charles Wilkes 1798–1877Frontier & SportNaval officer who led the United States Exploring Expedition, mapping the Pacific and Antarctica.Jedediah Smith 1799–1831Frontier & SportMountain man and fur trapper who was the first American to enter California by an overland route.Catharine Beecher 1800–1878Ideas & MediaPioneer in women's education who founded schools and advocated for female teachers across America.John Brown 1800–1859Reform & RightsMilitant abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry sharpened sectional conflict preceding the Civil War.Millard Fillmore 1800–1874Government & PoliticsThirteenth president who signed the Compromise of 1850 including the Fugitive Slave Act.Charles Goodyear 1800–1860Technology & BuildingSelf-taught chemist who discovered the vulcanization process that made rubber commercially viable.Nat Turner 1800–1831Reform & RightsLed the 1831 Virginia slave rebellion that prompted harsher slave codes across the South.David Farragut 1801–1870Government & PoliticsThe U.S. Navy's first admiral, whose victories at New Orleans and Mobile Bay were decisive in the Civil War.Brigham Young 1801–1877Ideas & MediaReligious and territorial leader who directed Mormon migration and settlement in the American West.Dorothea Dix 1802–1887Reform & RightsSocial reformer who championed humane treatment of the mentally ill and established asylums nationwide.Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882Arts & LettersEssayist and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement and shaped American intellectual thought.John Ericsson 1803–1889Technology & BuildingSwedish-American engineer who designed the ironclad USS Monitor, revolutionizing naval warfare.Jim Bridger 1804–1881Frontier & SportMountain man and guide who explored the Rocky Mountains and founded Fort Bridger.Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804–1864Arts & LettersNovelist whose The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables explored Puritan guilt and sin.Osceola 1804–1838Reform & RightsSeminole leader whose resistance during the Second Seminole War challenged federal removal policy.Franklin Pierce 1804–1869Government & PoliticsFourteenth president whose support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act deepened the sectional crisis over slavery.Cochise 1805–1874Reform & RightsChiricahua Apache leader who led resistance in the Southwest and negotiated a reservation for his people.William Lloyd Garrison 1805–1879Reform & RightsEditor of The Liberator and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society.Joseph Smith 1805–1844Ideas & MediaFounder of the Latter Day Saint movement, one of the most consequential religions to originate in the United States.John Roebling 1806–1869Technology & BuildingCivil engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, a landmark of 19th-century engineering.John A. Roebling 1806–1869Technology & BuildingDeveloped wire-rope suspension bridge design and planned the Brooklyn Bridge.Robert E. Lee 1807–1870Government & PoliticsConfederate commander whose military reputation and later commemoration became central to Civil War memory and the Lost Cause.Jefferson Davis 1808–1889Crime & NotorietyPresident of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory.Andrew Johnson 1808–1875Government & Politics17th president whose obstruction of Reconstruction weakened protections for formerly enslaved people and led to impeachment.Kit Carson 1809–1868Frontier & SportFrontiersman and scout who guided John C. Frémont and became a legend of the American West.Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865Government & Politics16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.Cyrus McCormick 1809–1884Technology & BuildingInventor of the mechanical reaper that transformed agriculture and fed a growing nation.Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849Arts & LettersMaster of macabre fiction and poetry who invented the detective story and influenced horror worldwide.Horace Greeley 1811–1872Ideas & MediaFounding editor of the New-York Tribune whose editorials shaped antebellum and Reconstruction-era debate.Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811–1896Reform & RightsAuthor of Uncle Tom's Cabin whose novel galvanized the abolitionist movement.Charles Sumner 1811–1874Government & PoliticsMassachusetts senator and abolitionist leader who pressed for Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation.John C. Frémont 1813–1890Frontier & SportExplorer and military officer whose five expeditions mapped much of the American West.Samuel Colt 1814–1862Technology & BuildingIndustrialist who popularized the revolver and pioneered interchangeable parts in manufacturing.George G. Meade 1815–1872Government & PoliticsUnion general whose command victory at Gettysburg marked a turning point in the Civil War.Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815–1902Reform & RightsPrincipal theorist and organizer of the nineteenth-century women’s rights and suffrage movements.Henry David Thoreau 1817–1862Reform & RightsWriter and philosopher whose works on nature, individual conscience, and civil disobedience influenced environmentalism and political protest.Frederick Douglass 1818–1895Reform & RightsFormer slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights.Maria Mitchell 1818–1889Science & MedicineFirst American woman professional astronomer who discovered a comet and taught at Vassar College.Elias Howe 1819–1867Technology & BuildingInventor who developed the first practical lockstitch sewing machine, revolutionizing the garment industry.Herman Melville 1819–1891Arts & LettersNovelist whose Moby-Dick is considered one of the greatest works of American literature.Walt Whitman 1819–1892Arts & LettersPoet whose Leaves of Grass celebrated democracy, nature, and the human body in free verse.