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 1830s Clear ×
Winslow Homer
1836 - 1910
Henry Adams
1838 - 1918
Robert Gould Shaw
1837 - 1863
Charles William Eliot
1834 - 1926
Charles Francis Adams Jr.
1835 - 1915
Phillips Brooks
1835 - 1893
Charles Ammi Cutter
1837 - 1903
James Crafts
1839 - 1917
Samuel Hubbard Scudder
1837 - 1911
William Stimpson
1832 - 1872
Francis Ellingwood Abbot
1836 - 1903
John Quincy Adams II
1833 - 1894
Justin Winsor
1831 - 1897
Henry Van Brunt
1832 - 1903
William H. Mumler
1832 - 1884
Annie Adams Fields
1834 - 1915
Francesca Alexander
1837 - 1917
George Frederick Barker
1835 - 1910
Susan Hale
1833 - 1910
Austin Abbott
1831 - 1896
Charles R. Adams
1834 - 1900
Benjamin Vaughan Abbott
1830 - 1890
William W. Warren
1834 - 1880
T. Jefferson Coolidge
1831 - 1920
Horatio Storer
1830 - 1922
Samuel Miller Quincy
1832 - 1887
John L. Blake
1831 - 1899
Fanny Ronalds
1839 - 1916
Enoch Wood Perry Jr.
1831 - 1915
Charles Russell Lowell
1835 - 1864
Edward A. Calahan
1838 - 1912
William Parsons Winchester Dana
1833 - 1927
William G. Binney
1833 - 1909
Charles Fessenden Morse
1839 - 1926
Anna Brackett
1836 - 1911
George Aiken (playwright)
1830 - 1876
Charles Hale
1831 - 1882
Charles Chapman Grafton
1830 - 1912
Frank Welch (American politician)
1835 - 1878
William Croswell Doane
1832 - 1913
Horace Scudder
1838 - 1902
Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt
1830 - 1912
Samuel Adams Drake
1833 - 1905
Lucy Toulmin Smith
1838 - 1911
Thomas G. Stevenson
1836 - 1864
Edward W. Hooper
1839 - 1901
William E. Sheridan
1839 - 1887
Edward Howard House
1836 - 1901
Stephen Salisbury Tuckerman
1830 - 1904
Nancy M. Hill
1833 - 1919
Thomas Oliver Selfridge Jr.
1836 - 1924
Caspar Crowninshield
1837 - 1897
Robert Treat Paine (philanthropist)
1835 - 1910
William J. Le Moyne
1831 - 1905
Frank M. Mayo
1839 - 1896
Charles Baldwin
1834 - 1896
Elizabeth Sewall Alcott
1835 - 1858
Thomas Sherwin
1839 - 1914
Henry Mason (piano manufacturer)
1831 - 1890
Daniel Harkins
1836 - 1902
James Duncan Hague
1836 - 1908
James Seanor
Born 1833
Algernon Sidney Badger
1839 - 1905
Thomas Forbes Cushing
1838 - 1902
George P. Bemis
1838 - 1916
Samuel Welles de Lavalette
1834 - 1892
Charles Jackson Paine
1833 - 1916
Peter Cushman Jones
1837 - 1922
William Osborn (Medal of Honor)
1837 - 1887
Isaac Bradford
1834 - 1898
Oliver O'Brien
1839 - 1894
Oliver Fairfield Wadsworth
1838 - 1911
Florence Freeman
1836 - 1876
Alonzo Cooper Rand
1831 - 1885
James Walker Tufts
1835 - 1902
John H. James (sailor)
1835 - 1914
David Nevins Jr.
1839 - 1898
Greely S. Curtis
1830 - 1897
Charles Sawyer Russell
1831 - 1866
George Whitaker (Oregon educator)
1836 - 1917
Nathaniel S. Keith
1838 - 1925
George Willis (Medal of Honor)
1839 - 1884
Horace H. Coolidge
1832 - 1912
William Moore (Medal of Honor)
1837 - 1918
William Parker (Medal of Honor)
Born 1832
Joseph Lewis Stackpole
1838 - 1904
William S. Bond (Medal of Honor)
1839 - 1892
Ida M. Eliot
1836 - 1923
Phillip Sidney Coolidge
1830 - 1863
John Smith (Medal of Honor, born 1831)
Born 1831
Charles Hallett Wing
1836 - 1915
Emily Gillmore Alden
Born 1834