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MAMassachusetts Famous People
Two presidents were born a few dozen yards apart
On Franklin Street in Quincy, then part of Braintree, stand two small saltbox farmhouses close enough that you can walk between them in under a minute. John Adams was born in the first on 30 October 1735. His son John Quincy Adams was born in the second on 11 July 1767. No other father and son in American history entered the presidency from neighbouring buildings, and both houses are preserved as Adams National Historical Park. John Adams served from 1797 to 1801, John Quincy from 1825 to 1829, and both lost re-election after a single term.
Two more followed. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on 29 May 1917 in a rented house at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, where his mother Rose kept index cards on each child's illnesses, and he served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. George H. W. Bush was born in Milton on 12 June 1924 and served from 1989 to 1993, a fact that surprises people who file him under Texas or Connecticut. That makes four presidents born in the state. Calvin Coolidge is the near miss: born at Plymouth Notch in Vermont, he became governor here and made his name breaking the 1919 Boston police strike.
Concord, Amherst and Salem in one generation
Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston in 1803, settled in Concord and turned his house into the address every American thinker wanted an invitation to. Henry David Thoreau, born in Concord in 1817, walked out to Walden Pond on 4 July 1845 and stayed two years, two months and two days. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, but grew up at Orchard House in Concord and wrote "Little Women" there in 1868.
Ninety miles west, Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst in 1830 and stayed in the family Homestead almost without leaving. Fewer than a dozen of her roughly 1,800 poems appeared in print while she was alive. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem in 1804 and added the "w" to the family name, distancing himself from his ancestor John Hathorne, a judge at the 1692 witch trials. The odd one out is Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston in 1809 to travelling actors and openly contemptuous of the city ever after.
Reformers, and the first man killed in the Revolution
Crispus Attucks, of Framingham and of African and Wampanoag descent, was the first of five men shot dead on King Street in the Boston Massacre on 5 March 1770. Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams in 1820 and moved with her family to New York state at six, which is why the suffrage movement is usually filed under Rochester rather than the Berkshires. Lucy Stone, born in West Brookfield in 1818, was the first woman from the state to earn a college degree and kept her own surname after marrying.
Clara Barton was born in North Oxford on Christmas Day 1821, nursed at Antietam and Fredericksburg, and founded the American Red Cross in 1881. Horace Mann, born in Franklin in 1796, became secretary of the state Board of Education in 1837 and built the model of tax-funded common schooling that most states copied. W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington in 1868, became the first African American to take a doctorate at Harvard in 1895, and helped found the NAACP in 1909.
A rocket in Auburn and two sports invented indoors
Robert Goddard, born in Worcester in 1882, launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket from his aunt Effie's farm in Auburn on 16 March 1926. It climbed about 41 feet and the flight lasted two and a half seconds. Elias Howe of Spencer patented the lockstitch sewing machine in 1846 and then spent years suing everyone who copied it. Alexander Graham Bell was Scottish, but the first intelligible sentence sent by telephone travelled between rooms in Boston in March 1876.
Two Olympic sports were invented in the state within four years and both indoors, to keep young men busy through the winter. James Naismith nailed peach baskets to a gallery railing at the Springfield YMCA training school in December 1891. William G. Morgan, working down the road at the Holyoke YMCA in 1895, wanted something gentler for older members and produced volleyball.
Screen, stand-up and the heavyweight from Brockton
Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born in Springfield in 1904, and Mulberry Street in his first published book is a real road in that city. Bette Davis was born in Lowell in 1908. Leonard Nimoy grew up in Boston's West End, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, and took the Vulcan salute from a priestly blessing he watched in an Orthodox synagogue as a boy.
Matt Damon was born in Cambridge in 1970 and Ben Affleck, born in Berkeley, California, was raised there from the age of two. They attended the same public high school and wrote "Good Will Hunting" together. Conan O'Brien was born in Brookline in 1963, Steve Carell in Concord in 1962, Uma Thurman in Boston in 1970, Mark Wahlberg in Dorchester in 1971. Rocky Marciano, born in Brockton in 1923 to Italian immigrant parents, retired as heavyweight champion in 1956 with a professional record of 49 wins and no defeats, still the only champion at that weight to finish unbeaten.
Which state produced which American?
Statedoku turns state facts into a daily logic puzzle. Birthplaces stick once you have placed them a few times.
Play today's puzzle →Common questions
How many US presidents were born in Massachusetts?
Four: John Adams and John Quincy Adams, both in what is now Quincy, John F. Kennedy in Brookline, and George H. W. Bush in Milton. Only Virginia and Ohio have produced more.
Was Benjamin Franklin from Massachusetts?
Yes. He was born on Milk Street in Boston in 1706 and was apprenticed to his brother's print shop before running away to Philadelphia at seventeen, which is why he is remembered as a Pennsylvanian.
Which famous writers were born in Massachusetts?
Emily Dickinson in Amherst, Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe in Boston, E. E. Cummings in Cambridge, Sylvia Plath in Boston, and Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, in Springfield.
Who invented basketball, and where?
James Naismith, a Canadian instructor at the YMCA training school in Springfield, in December 1891. Volleyball was invented four years later by William G. Morgan at the Holyoke YMCA, about 10 miles away.
Are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck really from Boston?
Damon was born in Cambridge in 1970. Affleck was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in Cambridge from the age of two. They went to the same high school and lived two blocks apart.