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NHNew Hampshire Famous People
The line on every New Hampshire licence plate began as a note excusing an absence. In July 1809 John Stark, the general who had wrecked a British foraging column at Bennington in 1777, was too ill to attend the battle's anniversary dinner and sent his toast in writing instead: live free or die, death is not the worst of evils. Stark was born in 1728 in what is now Londonderry and had been captured by Abenaki raiders as a young man before he fought for the British at Rogers' Rangers and then against them at Bunker Hill. The legislature made his sentence the state motto in 1945.
Franklin Pierce is the only president the state has produced
Pierce was born in Hillsborough on 23 November 1804 and served as the fourteenth president from 1853 to 1857. He came in as a compromise candidate nobody had expected, and left as the only elected president his own party refused to renominate, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 tore the Democrats apart and turned Kansas into a shooting war. Two months before the inauguration, he and his wife Jane watched their eleven-year-old son Benjamin die in a train derailment near Andover, Massachusetts. He was the last of their three children.
Pierce's college friend Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his campaign biography in 1852, and Pierce made him consul at Liverpool in return. Two other New Hampshire men shaped national politics without reaching the office. Daniel Webster, born in Salisbury in 1782, argued Dartmouth College v. Woodward before the Supreme Court in 1819 on behalf of his own college, and Horace Greeley, born in Amherst in 1811, founded the New-York Tribune and ran against Grant in 1872, dying before the electoral votes were counted.
Derry to orbit, Concord to Challenger
Alan Shepard was born in Derry in 1923 and on 5 May 1961 became the first American in space, a fifteen-minute suborbital arc in Freedom 7 that ended in the Atlantic. Grounded for years afterwards by an inner ear disorder, he had surgery, got his flight status back, and commanded Apollo 14 in 1971, walking on the Moon at forty-seven and hitting two golf balls with a makeshift six iron.
Christa McAuliffe taught social studies at Concord High School and was chosen from more than eleven thousand applicants to be the first teacher in space. She died with six crewmates when Challenger broke apart seventy-three seconds after launch on 28 January 1986. Concord's planetarium, opened in 1990, carries both their names.
The woman who talked five presidents into Thanksgiving
Sarah Josepha Hale was born in Newport in 1788, widowed at thirty-four with five children, and turned to writing to support them. She published the poem beginning "Mary had a little lamb" in 1830, edited Godey's Lady's Book for forty years from Philadelphia, and spent seventeen of those years writing to presidents asking for a fixed national day of thanksgiving. Lincoln agreed in October 1863 and set it on the last Thursday in November. Mary Baker Eddy, born in Bow in 1821, founded Christian Science after a recovery she attributed to scripture, published Science and Health in 1875, and started The Christian Science Monitor in 1908 at the age of eighty-seven.
Writers who were born here or came and stayed
John Irving was born in Exeter in 1942, wrestled at Phillips Exeter where his stepfather taught, and set A Prayer for Owen Meany in a New Hampshire town of his own invention. Dan Brown was born in Exeter too, in 1964, the son of an Exeter mathematics teacher. Robert Frost came the other way: born in San Francisco in 1874, he farmed in Derry from 1900 to 1911, wrote much of his first two books there, and won a Pulitzer for the 1923 collection he titled New Hampshire. J. D. Salinger moved to Cornish in 1953 and stayed for fifty-seven years, publishing almost nothing after 1965. Ken Burns has edited his documentaries out of Walpole since 1979.
Comedians, a ski racer, and the first games console
Adam Sandler was born in Brooklyn in 1966 but grew up in Manchester and went to Manchester Central High. Sarah Silverman and Seth Meyers both grew up in Bedford, a few miles south. Bode Miller, born in Easton in 1977 and raised without electricity for part of his childhood, won six Olympic medals, more than any other American alpine skier. Carlton Fisk was born just across the river in Vermont but grew up in Charlestown, and his home run off the left field foul pole in game six of the 1975 World Series is the most replayed swing in baseball. Ralph Baer, a German refugee who worked at Sanders Associates in Nashua, built the prototype that Magnavox sold in 1972 as the Odyssey, the first home video game console, and received the National Medal of Technology in 2006.
Match the person to the state
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Play today's puzzle →Common questions about famous people from New Hampshire
Which president was born in New Hampshire?
Franklin Pierce, born in Hillsborough on 23 November 1804 and president from 1853 to 1857. He is the only president from the state.
Who was the first American in space?
Alan Shepard, born in Derry, New Hampshire, in 1923. He flew a fifteen-minute suborbital mission on 5 May 1961 and later commanded Apollo 14 and walked on the Moon.
Where does the motto Live Free or Die come from?
General John Stark of Londonderry wrote it in an 1809 letter to veterans of the Battle of Bennington when he was too unwell to attend their reunion. New Hampshire adopted it as the state motto in 1945.
Which celebrities grew up in New Hampshire?
Adam Sandler in Manchester, Sarah Silverman and Seth Meyers in Bedford, the novelists John Irving and Dan Brown in Exeter, and the skier Bode Miller in Easton.
Did J. D. Salinger really live in New Hampshire?
Yes. He bought land in Cornish in 1953 and lived there until his death in 2010, giving almost no interviews and publishing nothing after 1965.