34.4348° N, 81.0284° W
CHARLESTON
Most Famous People Born in Charleston, United States
- Notable people
- 749
- Peak decade
- 1940s
- Median birth year
- 1920
- Most distinctive
- Baseball 4.5×
Charleston's profile is frozen in antebellum amber: an outsized Lawyer and Judge class built by the planter bar that dominated South Carolina politics from secession through Reconstruction, with an Officer bench propped up by the Citadel and the Confederate officer corps. The smaller, stranger note is the Novelist thread — Charleston Renaissance writers like DuBose Heyward, whose Porgy became the seed for American opera.
One face per decade — the most globally famous figure born in Charleston during each.
Notable Births by Decade
Click a decade to filter the list below. Peak: 1940s with 63 notable births.
What Charleston Is Known For
Click any row to filter the list of people below.
Politician is Charleston's biggest profession — 22% of all notables (166).
Charleston over-indexes on baseball — 4.5× the global rate.
Charleston under-produces writer — only 0.6× the global rate.
Profession Mix Over Time
Each band shows a profession family's share of Charleston's notable births by decade. Hover the chart for the breakdown at any decade.
- Politics & Law
- Sports
- Film & TV
- Music
- Writing
- Science
- Other
- Filtered to 1800s Clear ×
Angelina Grimké
1805 - 1879
William Gilmore Simms
1806 - 1870
Albert Mackey
1807 - 1881
Benjamin Huger (general)
1805 - 1877
George Trenholm
1807 - 1876
Lewis Charles Levin
1808 - 1860
Thomas Drayton
1809 - 1891
William Aiken Jr.
1806 - 1887
Philip Phillips (lawyer)
1807 - 1884
William Henry Gist
1807 - 1874
Thomas Day (North Carolina)
1801 - 1861
Theodore Gaillard Hunt
1805 - 1893
Henry M. Hyams
1806 - 1875
James Edwin Belser
1805 - 1859
William Valk
1806 - 1879
Francisco Adolfo Sauvalle
1807 - 1879
Robert Wilson Gibbes
1809 - 1866
Moses Cohen Mordecai
1804 - 1888
William May Wightman
1808 - 1882
Charles Macbeth
1805 - 1881
Franklin J. Moses Sr.
1804 - 1877
Edward McCrady
1802 - 1892
George Seabrook Bryan
1809 - 1905
John Schnierle
1808 - 1861