notable people

Colonial Era & Revolutionary War (1607–1783)

  • John Winthrop – Puritan leader, “City upon a Hill”

  • Roger Williams – Founded Rhode Island, separation of church and state

  • Anne Hutchinson – Religious dissenter in Massachusetts

  • Benjamin Franklin – Enlightenment thinker, diplomat

  • George Washington – Commander of Continental Army, 1st President

  • Thomas Paine – Wrote Common Sense

  • Thomas Jefferson – Author of Declaration of Independence, 3rd President

  • Alexander Hamilton – Federalist, first Treasury Secretary

Early Republic (1783–1820)

  • James Madison – “Father of the Constitution,” 4th President

  • John Adams – 2nd President, Federalist

  • Aaron Burr – Vice President, killed Hamilton in a duel

  • Tecumseh – Native American leader who resisted U.S. expansion

Jacksonian Era & Reform (1820–1848)

  • Andrew Jackson – 7th President, expanded suffrage, Trail of Tears

  • Henry Clay – “Great Compromiser,” American System

  • John C. Calhoun – States’ rights, nullification

  • Frederick Douglass – Former slave, abolitionist

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton – Women’s rights, Seneca Falls Convention

  • Dorothea Dix – Mental health reform

  • Horace Mann – Public education reformer

Civil War & Reconstruction (1848–1877)

  • Abraham Lincoln – 16th President, Emancipation Proclamation

  • Ulysses S. Grant – Union general, later President

  • Robert E. Lee – Confederate general

  • Jefferson Davis – Confederate President

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe – Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin

  • John Brown – Radical abolitionist

  • Thaddeus Stevens – Radical Republican during Reconstruction

Gilded Age & Progressive Era (1877–1920)

  • Andrew Carnegie – Steel industry, philanthropy

  • John D. Rockefeller – Oil monopoly

  • Jane Addams – Settlement house movement

  • Booker T. Washington – Vocational education advocate

  • W.E.B. Du Bois – Civil rights leader, NAACP founder

  • Theodore Roosevelt – Trust-buster, conservationist

  • Woodrow Wilson – WWI president, 14 Points

World Wars & Interwar Period (1920–1945)

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt – New Deal, WWII

  • Herbert Hoover – Great Depression starts

  • Harry Truman – Dropped atomic bombs, start of Cold War

  • Dwight D. Eisenhower – WWII general, later President

Cold War & Civil Rights (1945–1980s)

  • Joseph McCarthy – Red Scare, anti-communism

  • Martin Luther King Jr. – Civil Rights Movement

  • Malcolm X – Black Power advocate

  • John F. Kennedy – Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights

  • Lyndon B. Johnson – Great Society, Vietnam

  • Richard Nixon – Watergate scandal, détente

  • Ronald Reagan – Conservative Revolution, end of Cold War

Modern America (1990s–Present)

  • George W. Bush – 9/11, War on Terror

  • Barack Obama – First African American president, Affordable Care Act