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 1810s Clear ×
Wade Hampton III
1818 - 1902
Stephen A. Hurlbut
1815 - 1882
Daniel Payne
1811 - 1893
Solomon Nunes Carvalho
1815 - 1897
Andrew Gordon Magrath
1813 - 1893
Lucius B. Northrop
1811 - 1894
Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord
1810 - 1879
William Waters Boyce
1818 - 1890
Robert Purvis
1810 - 1898
Lewis Reeve Gibbes
1810 - 1894
Jakob August Lorent
1813 - 1884
Benjamin M. Palmer
1818 - 1902
St. Julien Ravenel
1819 - 1882
Percival Drayton
1812 - 1865
Samuel P. Moore
1813 - 1889
Francois P. Giraud
1818 - 1877
Raphael J. Moses
1812 - 1893
Edwin Warren Moïse
1810 - 1868
Benjamin Cudworth Yancey Jr.
1817 - 1891
Alexander Smith Taylor
1817 - 1876
Thomas Saltus Lubbock
1817 - 1862
Mitchell Campbell King
1815 - 1901
Thomas Wightman
1811 - 1888
Thomas Grace (Bishop of Saint Paul)
1814 - 1897
William Dennison Porter
1810 - 1883
W. Hasell Wilson
1811 - 1902
Solomon Heydenfeldt
1816 - 1890
Edward Middleton
1810 - 1883
William W. Sale
Born 1819
Isaac Stockton Keith Ogier
1819 - 1861