← 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
Thomas Paine22 decades - 9
Aaron Burr22 decades - 10
Abigail Adams16 decades - 11
Martha Washington21 decades - 12
Samuel Adams22 decades - 13
Tadeusz Kościuszko0 decades - 14
John Jay22 decades - 15
Patrick Henry22 decades - 16
Benedict Arnold22 decades - 17
Elbridge Gerry22 decades - 18
John Marshall22 decades - 19
John Hancock22 decades - 20
John Jacob Astor I0 decades - 21
Paul Revere21 decades - 22
Phillis Wheatley16 decades - 23
Daniel Boone22 decades - 24
Noah Webster22 decades - 25
Benjamin Rush22 decades - 26
Nathanael Greene17 decades - 27
George Mason22 decades - 28
Henry Knox22 decades - 29
Roger Sherman22 decades - 30
Casimir Pulaski9 decades - 31
Benjamin Banneker7 decades
- 32
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben5 decades - 33
Nathan Hale20 decades - 34
Ethan Allen22 decades - 35
Betsy Ross13 decades - 36Martha Jefferson11 decades
- 37
Robert Morris22 decades - 38
Edmund Randolph22 decades - 39
Charles Carroll of Carrollton20 decades - 40
Richard Henry Lee22 decades - 41
Albert Gallatin7 decades - 42
Benjamin Thompson22 decades - 43
Horatio Gates22 decades - 44
Henry Lee III0 decades - 45
Lizzie Velasquez0 decades - 46
John Singleton Copley21 decades - 47
John Trumbull22 decades - 48
Gouverneur Morris22 decades - 49
Gilbert Stuart22 decades - 50
John Rutledge22 decades - 51
Benjamin West22 decades - 52
Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton0 decades - 53
Joseph Brant19 decades - 54
James Wilson22 decades - 55
Robert R. Livingston22 decades - 56
Timothy Dexter8 decades - 57
Anthony Wayne22 decades - 58
Rufus King22 decades - 59
Oliver Ellsworth22 decades - 60
Charles Willson Peale13 decades - 61
Timothy Pickering22 decades - 62
Philip Schuyler21 decades - 63
John Dickinsonnot measured- - 64
George Rogers Clark21 decades - 65
Josiah Bartlett19 decades
- 66
Benjamin Harrison V0 decades - 67
Daniel Morgan20 decades - 68
Mercy Otis Warren5 decades - 69
Edward Rutledge22 decades - 70
Thomas Mifflin22 decades - 71
Benjamin Henry Latrobe7 decades - 72
Samuel Chase22 decades - 73
Arthur St. Clair22 decades - 74
Thomas McKean20 decades - 75
John Sullivan22 decades - 76
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney22 decades - 77
Joseph Warren22 decades - 78
Caesar Rodney21 decades - 79
Israel Putnam22 decades - 80
Frederick Muhlenberg0 decades - 81
William Paterson22 decades - 82
Edward Livingston22 decades - 83
Jonathan Dayton19 decades - 84
Oliver Wolcott22 decades - 85
Francis Hopkinson22 decades - 86
Sybil Ludington0 decades - 87
William Bartram22 decades - 88
David Rittenhouse22 decades - 89
Button Gwinnett14 decades - 90
Samuel Huntington22 decades - 91
George Wythe22 decades - 92
William Livingston22 decades - 93
Henry Dearborn22 decades - 94
Mary Ball Washington1 decades - 95
James McHenry19 decades - 96
Public Universal Friend0 decades - 97
William Blount22 decades - 98
Abraham Baldwin21 decades - 99
John Langdon22 decades - 100
Bushrod Washington22 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.