ILIllinois Famous People

Illinois stamps Land of Lincoln on its licence plates, and Lincoln was born in Kentucky. The only president actually born inside the state is Ronald Reagan, in a rented flat above a bakery in Tampico, a town of a few hundred people, on February 6, 1911. The gap between the two is a decent summary of how Illinois collects famous people. Some are born here. Far more arrive, usually in Chicago, and do the work that makes them famous once they get off the train.

Four presidents, only one of them a native

Reagan's family moved around northern Illinois before settling in Dixon, where he lifeguarded seven summers at Lowell Park on the Rock River and was credited with 77 rescues. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and went into radio before Hollywood and, eventually, the presidency from 1981 to 1989.

Abraham Lincoln arrived in 1830 at twenty one, kept a store and split rails at New Salem, moved to Springfield in 1837 and practised law on the circuit for two decades. He faced Stephen Douglas in seven debates across the state in 1858, from Ottawa in August to Alton in October, lost that Senate race and won the presidency two years later. He is buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.

Ulysses S. Grant, born in Ohio, was clerking in his father's leather goods store in Galena when the war began in April 1861. The town sent nine generals to the Union army and gave Grant a house when he came back. Barack Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School, served in the state senate from 1997 and announced his presidential campaign outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield in February 2007, deliberately standing where Lincoln had given his house divided speech.

Oak Park, one suburb, an unlikely output

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park on July 21, 1899, in a house on North Oak Park Avenue, and won the Nobel Prize in 1954. Betty White was born in the same suburb on January 17, 1922. Ray Kroc was born there in 1902, spent decades selling paper cups and milkshake mixers, and opened his first McDonald's in Des Plaines in 1955 at the age of 52. Edgar Rice Burroughs was living in Oak Park when Tarzan of the Apes appeared in 1912. Frank Lloyd Wright was not born in Illinois at all, but he built his home and studio on Chicago Avenue in 1889 and designed roughly twenty five buildings within walking distance of it, including Unity Temple in 1908.

Chicago music, mostly made by people born elsewhere

The Great Migration is the reason the Chicago sound exists. Muddy Waters left Mississippi in 1943 and plugged in, cutting records for Chess at 2120 South Michigan Avenue that a generation of British bands would copy note for note. Sam Cooke was born in Clarksdale and raised in Bronzeville. Nat King Cole came from Montgomery as a small boy to a South Side church where his father preached. Mahalia Jackson arrived from New Orleans in 1927 and sang at the March on Washington in 1963.

The state's own natives are just as strong. Miles Davis was born in Alton on May 26, 1926 and grew up in East St. Louis, the son of a dentist. Herbie Hancock, born in Chicago in 1940, played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony at eleven. Kanye West was born in Atlanta and raised in South Shore. Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson and Common all came out of the South Side within a generation of each other.

Comedians, actors and the Second City pipeline

Walt Disney was born at 1249 Tripp Avenue in the Hermosa neighbourhood on December 5, 1901. The family left for a Missouri farm when he was four, and he came back as a teenager to attend McKinley High School and take night classes at the Art Institute. Richard Pryor grew up in Peoria and worked its clubs before New York. Robin Williams was born in Chicago in 1951 and Harrison Ford in 1942, raised in Park Ridge. John Belushi came from Wheaton and Bill Murray from Wilmette, and both went through Second City on Wells Street, the improv theatre that has supplied network comedy since 1959.

Reformers, writers and a reactor under a football stand

Jane Addams, born in Cedarville in 1860, opened Hull House on Halsted Street in 1889 and became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Ida B. Wells moved to Chicago in 1894 after a mob destroyed her Memphis newspaper office, kept documenting lynchings and helped found the NAACP. Gwendolyn Brooks, raised in Bronzeville, became the first Black writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1950. Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg in 1878 and Ray Bradbury in Waukegan in 1920, a town he renamed Green Town in Dandelion Wine. And on December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi produced the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in a squash court under the west stands of Stagg Field.

• Jackie Joyner-Kersee, born in East St. Louis in 1962, won three Olympic golds in the heptathlon and long jump.
• Red Grange grew up in Wheaton hauling ice, starred at the University of Illinois and signed with the Bears in 1925.
• Dwyane Wade was born in Chicago in 1982 and grew up in Robbins and Oak Lawn.
• Bonnie Blair, raised in Champaign, won five Olympic speed skating golds.
• Michelle Obama grew up in a South Shore bungalow and went to Whitney Young High School.
• Hillary Clinton was born in Chicago in 1947 and raised in Park Ridge.
• Hugh Hefner launched Playboy from a Hyde Park apartment in 1953.

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