Saturday, August 17, 2013

How old were they really?

Young Men and Women lead the Revolution for Liberty!

Founding Fathers kinda denotes “older” but here’s a list from the Journal of the American Revolution that gives us the ages of those from our history and their ages on July 4, 1776 

Authors often reveal the age of a particular soldier, politician or other main character in books about the Revolution, but I routinely find myself wondering about their peers at the same time. As it turns out, many Founding Fathers were less than 40 years old in 1776 with several qualifying as Founding Teenagers and Twentysomethings. And though the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, more than a dozen of them were 35 or younger!
“We tend to see them as much older than they were,” said David McCullough in a 2005 speech. “Because we’re seeing them in portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others when they were truly the Founding Fathers — when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court and their hair, if it hadn’t turned white, was powdered white. We see the awkward teeth. We see the elder statesmen. At the time of the Revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s–young woman’s cause.”
Signers of the Declaration up first and after the jump; some other “names” you might recognize after the jump.
  • Thomas Lynch, Jr., 26
  • Edward Rutledge, 26
  • George Walton, 27
  • Thomas Heyward, Jr., 29
  • Benjamin Rush, 30
  • Elbridge Gerry, 31
  • Thomas Jefferson, 33
  • Thomas Stone, 33
  • William Hooper, 34
  • Arthur Middleton, 34
  • James Wilson, 34
  • Samuel Chase, 35
  • William Paca, 35
  • John Penn, 35
  • George Clymer, 37
  • Thomas Nelson, Jr., 37
  • Charles Carroll, 38
  • Francis Hopkinson, 38
  • Carter Braxton, 39
  • John Hancock, 39
  • John Adams, 40

  • William Floyd, 41
  • Button Gwinnett, 41*
  • Francis Lightfoot Lee, 41
  • Robert Morris, 42
  • Thomas McKean, 42
  • George Read, 42
  • Samuel Huntington, 44
  • Richard Henry Lee, 44
  • Robert Treat Paine, 45
  • Richard Stockton, 45
  • William Williams, 45
  • Josiah Bartlett, 46
  • Joseph Hewes, 46
  • George Ross, 46
  • William Whipple, 46
  • Caesar Rodney, 47
  • William Ellery, 48
  • Oliver Wolcott, 49
  • Abraham Clark, 50
  • Benjamin Harrison, 50
  • Lewis Morris, 50
  • George Wythe, 50
  • John Morton, 51
  • Lyman Hall, 52
  • Samuel Adams, 53
  • John Witherspoon, 53
  • Roger Sherman, 55
  • James Smith, 56
  • Philip Livingston, 60
  • George Taylor, 60
  • Matthew Thornton, 62
  • Francis Lewis, 63
  • John Hart, 65
  • Stephen Hopkins, 69
  • Benjamin Franklin, 70
More names over at the Journal of the American Revolution, but here are some you might recognize



  • Andrew Jackson, 9
  • Marquis de Lafayette, 18
  • James Monroe, 18
  • John Trumbull, 20
  • Aaron Burr, 20
  • John Marshall, 20
  • Nathan Hale, 21
  • Alexander Hamilton, 21
  • Betsy Ross, 24
  • William Washington, 24
  • James Madison, 25
  • Henry Knox, 25
  • John Paul Jones, 28
  • John Jay, 30
  • Abigail Adams, 31
  • Casimir Pulaski, 31
  • Nathanael Greene, 33
  • Benedict Arnold, 35
  • Charles Cornwallis, 37
  • Ethan Allen, 38
  • King George III, 38
  • Thomas Paine, 39
  • Patrick Henry, 40
  • Daniel Boone, 41
  • Paul Revere, 41
  • Thomas Sumter, 41
  • Lord North, 44
  • George Washington, 44
  • Martha Washington, 45
  • William Howe, 46
  • John Stark, 47 (“Live Free or Die”)
  • Thomas Gage, 56

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