42.3449° N, 71.0753° W
BOSTON
Most Famous People Born in Boston, United States
- Notable people
- 3,663
- Peak decade
- 1950s
- Median birth year
- 1926
- Most distinctive
- Novelist 3.5×
America's oldest civic intelligentsia. Boston's notables are unusually concentrated in the 1700s and 1800s by American standards, and the distinctive shelves still read like a Yankee almanac — novelists, lawyers, military officers, mathematicians, and diplomats, the trades of a city where Harvard, the State House, and the Old North Church share a few square miles. The modern half tilts more conventionally toward Red Sox baseball, actors, and a deep college-bred music scene.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Boston during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1950s with 348 notable births.
What Boston Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Actor is Boston's biggest profession — 9% of all notables (314).
Boston over-indexes on novelist — 3.5× the global rate.
Boston under-produces football — only 0.2× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Boston's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Politics & Law
- Sports
- Writing
- Film & TV
- Science
- Music
- Other
- Filtered to 1820s Clear ×
Francis Parkman
1823 - 1893
Gardiner Greene Hubbard
1822 - 1897
Francis James Child
1825 - 1896
Edward Everett Hale
1822 - 1909
James Lord Pierpont
1822 - 1893
Benjamin Apthorp Gould
1824 - 1896
George Francis Train
1829 - 1904
Mary Livermore
1820 - 1905
Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz
1822 - 1907
Charles Devens
1820 - 1891
George Henry Hall (artist)
1825 - 1913
William Mason (composer)
1829 - 1908
Harriet Hanson Robinson
1825 - 1911
Josiah Parsons Cooke
1827 - 1894
Horace Gray
1828 - 1902
Caroline Healey Dall
1822 - 1912
George Henry Gordon
1823 - 1886
James Cutler Dunn Parker
1828 - 1916
William Francis Channing
1820 - 1901
Charles Callahan Perkins
1823 - 1886
Adeline Dutton Train Whitney
1824 - 1906
Henry Bryant (naturalist)
1820 - 1867
Maturin Murray Ballou
1820 - 1895
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman
1821 - 1873
Joseph H. Walker
1829 - 1907
George Martin Lane
1823 - 1897
Roswell Farnham
1827 - 1903
Francis Wayland III
1826 - 1904
Susan Webb Cushman
1822 - 1859
John W. Candler
1828 - 1903
Louise Taft
1827 - 1907
John Joseph Williams
1822 - 1907
Eliza Biscaccianti
1824 - 1896
Charles K. Tuckerman
1827 - 1896
John Lowell (judge, 1865–1884)
1824 - 1897
Henry P. Kidder
1823 - 1886
Franklin W. Smith
1826 - 1911
Thomas J.C. Amory
1828 - 1864
Quincy Adams Shaw
1825 - 1908
Lucretia Peabody Hale
1820 - 1900
Robert Edwards Carter Stearns
1827 - 1909
Erastus Otis Haven
1820 - 1881
Daniel Sargent Curtis
1825 - 1908
Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee
1829 - 1888
Samuel Eliot
1821 - 1898
Clifton A. Hall
1826 - 1913
Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney
1824 - 1904
James Elliot Cabot
1821 - 1903
Samuel Kneeland (naturalist)
1821 - 1888
Moses Wight
1827 - 1895
George Henry Sanderson
1824 - 1893
Octavius Frothingham
1822 - 1895
John O'Connor (Canadian politician)
1824 - 1887
Augustine Joseph Hickey Duganne
1823 - 1884
James Chaplin Beecher
1828 - 1886
Thomas Edward Chickering
1824 - 1871
Thomas Kilby Smith
1820 - 1887
James Otis (politician)
1826 - 1875
Frederick Dickinson Williams
1829 - 1915
Henry F. Teschemacher
1823 - 1904
Charles Harding Loring
1828 - 1907
George Francis McGinnis
1826 - 1910
Matthew Sherman
1827 - 1898
Richard Dennis (Medal of Honor)
1826 - 1889
Edward Gardiner
1825 - 1859
Franklin Seaver Pratt
1829 - 1894
Charles A. Phelps
1820 - 1902
Henry J. Daggett
1826 - 1910
Joseph Mansfield (journalist)
1828 - 1854
Sarah C. Frothingham
1821 - 1861
Henry B. Metcalf
1829 - 1904
Zabdiel Boylston Adams
1829 - 1902
Edwin May (architect)
1823 - 1880
James F. Curtis
1825 - 1914
Robert A. Vinal
1821 - 1887
James Augustus Fox
1827 - 1901
Frederick Winsor (surgeon)
1829 - 1889
Samuel Bradford Jones
1826 - 1908
Frank Fuller
1827 - 1915