← Fame through time1700-1799
The 18th century
Whose working lives fell in the 18th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 18th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
George Washington22 decades - 2
Thomas Jefferson22 decades - 3
Benjamin Franklin22 decades - 4
John Adams22 decades - 5
James Madison22 decades - 6
Alexander Hamilton22 decades - 7
James Monroe22 decades - 8
Aaron Burr22 decades - 9
Abigail Adams16 decades - 10
Martha Washington21 decades - 11
Samuel Adams22 decades - 12
John Jay22 decades - 13
Patrick Henry22 decades - 14
Elbridge Gerry22 decades - 15
John Marshall22 decades - 16
John Hancock22 decades - 17
George Mason22 decades - 18
Henry Knox22 decades - 19
Roger Sherman22 decades - 20
Ethan Allen22 decades - 21Martha Jefferson11 decades
- 22
Robert Morris22 decades - 23
Edmund Randolph22 decades - 24
Charles Carroll of Carrollton20 decades - 25
Richard Henry Lee22 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.