US presidents and the states where they were born

Only 21 states have produced a US president by birth. Virginia leads with 8, Ohio follows with 7, and New York claims 5. The rest are spread thin across New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the industrial Midwest, with a single outlier in Hawaii (Barack Obama) and one in California (Richard Nixon). The 29 states that have never produced a president stretch across almost the entire western half of the country. This guide lists every president by birth state, explains why the map skews so heavily east, and highlights the trivia that trips people up.

Presidents ranked by birth state

The count below uses the modern definition of the office: 45 individuals across 46 presidencies, since Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is counted as both the 22nd and 24th president.

Birth state	Count	Presidents
Virginia	8	Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, W. H. Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Wilson
Ohio	7	Grant, Hayes, Garfield, B. Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Harding
New York	5	Van Buren, Fillmore, T. Roosevelt, F. D. Roosevelt, Trump
Massachusetts	4	J. Adams, J. Q. Adams, Kennedy, G. H. W. Bush
North Carolina	3	Jackson, Polk, A. Johnson
Texas	2	Eisenhower, L. B. Johnson
Vermont	2	Arthur, Coolidge
Arkansas	1	Clinton
California	1	Nixon
Connecticut	1	G. W. Bush
Georgia	1	Carter
Hawaii	1	Obama
Illinois	1	Reagan
Iowa	1	Hoover
Kentucky	1	Lincoln
Missouri	1	Truman
Nebraska	1	Ford
New Hampshire	1	Pierce
New Jersey	1	Cleveland
Pennsylvania	1	Buchanan
South Carolina	1	Biden (see note)

Note on Joe Biden: the 46th president was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, not South Carolina. The single South Carolina slot in older count lists is a common error, and the corrected total gives Pennsylvania two presidents (Buchanan and Biden) and drops South Carolina to zero. Twenty birth states, not twenty-one, is the accurate figure once Biden is placed correctly.

The Virginia dynasty and why the East dominates

Four of the first five presidents were born in Virginia: George Washington (Westmoreland County, 1732), Thomas Jefferson (Shadwell, 1743), James Madison (Port Conway, 1751) and James Monroe (Westmoreland County, 1758). John Adams, the second president, was the only exception, born in Braintree, Massachusetts. Historians call this stretch, from 1789 through 1825, the Virginia Dynasty. Only the two Adams presidencies interrupted a 36-year run of Virginia-born chief executives.

The pattern reflects the demographics of the founding era. Virginia was the most populous state at the first census in 1790, with roughly 747,000 residents. Its plantation gentry produced a large share of the officers, delegates and diplomats of the Revolutionary period. Massachusetts, which produced the two Adamses, was the second most populous northern state and the seat of the intellectual case for independence.

Virginia adds two more antebellum presidents in William Henry Harrison (born at Berkeley Plantation, 1773) and John Tyler (Charles City County, 1790), plus Zachary Taylor (Barboursville, 1784). Its final entry is Woodrow Wilson, born in Staunton in 1856 and raised in Georgia and South Carolina. No Virginian has been elected president since Wilson in 1912.

Ohio's post-Civil War run

Between 1869 and 1923, seven of the twelve presidents were born in Ohio. In order of service: Ulysses S. Grant (Point Pleasant, 1822), Rutherford B. Hayes (Delaware, 1822), James A. Garfield (Moreland Hills, 1831), Benjamin Harrison (North Bend, 1833), William McKinley (Niles, 1843), William Howard Taft (Cincinnati, 1857) and Warren G. Harding (Blooming Grove, 1865). Ohio was a crucial swing state in the late 19th century and hosted the intersection of Union Army veteran politics and the industrial Republican Party.

Two of these were assassinated in office: Garfield (shot 1881, died 1881) and McKinley (shot 1901, died 1901). Harding died of a heart attack in office in 1923. That gives Ohio the darkest presidential mortality record of any birth state. The Buckeye State also holds a curiosity: William Henry Harrison, whose grandson Benjamin Harrison was born in Ohio, was himself born in Virginia. The Harrisons are the only grandfather-grandson pair in presidential history, split across two states.

New England, the Midwest and the western outliers

Massachusetts has produced four presidents: John Adams (Braintree, 1735), John Quincy Adams (Braintree, 1767), John F. Kennedy (Brookline, 1917) and George H. W. Bush (Milton, 1924). The Adams pair is one of two father-son sets in presidential history. The other is George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, though the younger Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1946, making Connecticut a one-president state.

Vermont, with a population under 660,000 today, has produced two presidents: Chester A. Arthur (Fairfield, 1829) and Calvin Coolidge (Plymouth Notch, 1872). This is the highest presidents-per-capita ratio of any state. New Hampshire's single entry is Franklin Pierce, born in Hillsborough in 1804.

The Midwest arrives late. Abraham Lincoln was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809 but is claimed by Illinois for political purposes. The first true Illinois-born president was Ronald Reagan (Tampico, 1911). Iowa contributes Herbert Hoover (West Branch, 1874), the first president born west of the Mississippi. Nebraska contributes Gerald Ford, though he was born in Omaha in 1913 and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The far-west outliers are notable. Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, in 1913, the only California-born president. Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1961, the westernmost birthplace of any US president and the only one outside the continental United States. Between them, they are the only presidents born in a state admitted after 1889.

States that have never produced a president

Twenty-nine states have never produced a president by birth. The list, by region:

• West (10): Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.
• Midwest (7): Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin.
• South (6): Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia.
• Northeast (2): Maine, Rhode Island.

The absence of any Deep South president born after the Civil War, apart from Georgia's Jimmy Carter (Plains, 1924) and Arkansas's Bill Clinton (Hope, 1946), reflects the political isolation of the region from 1865 through the mid-20th century. The absence of every state west of the Rockies except California and Hawaii reflects when those states joined the union. Wyoming was admitted in 1890, Arizona in 1912, Alaska and Hawaii in 1959. Any citizen born there before statehood was born in a territory, not a state.

Presidents born in log cabins and other trivia

• Eight presidents were born as British subjects, all in the original 13 colonies before 1776: Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams (born 1767), Jackson and W. H. Harrison.
• Seven presidents were reportedly born in log cabins: Jackson, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Garfield and Grant. The log-cabin myth became a campaign staple in William Henry Harrison's 1840 run, even though Harrison himself was born on a Virginia plantation.
• The oldest birth state, by admission date, is Delaware (1787), which has never produced a president. The youngest birth state to produce one is Hawaii (admitted 1959, birth of Obama in 1961).
• Zachary Taylor was born in Virginia, raised in Kentucky, and buried in Louisville. Louisiana claims him for statues even though he never lived there.
• Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaws, a border region between North and South Carolina. Both states claim him. Historians generally assign him to South Carolina based on his own statements, but modern maps often place his birthplace in Union County, North Carolina. This page counts him as North Carolina, following the National Park Service marker.

Related guides