From "Finding A Way To Homeschool" by Justin Garcia:

Famous Homeschoolers

Venus and Serena Williams - famous tennis superstar sisters
George Washington - 1st President of the United States
Thomas Edison - famous American inventor and businessman
Winston Churchill - Prime Minister during WWII and famous
for writing
Agatha Christie - famous mystery author
Margaret Mead - famous American cultural anthropologist
Charlie Chaplin - famous silent film actor
Albert Schweitzer - theologian, organist, philosopher, physi-
cian, and medical missionary
Mark Twain - author
General Douglas MacArthur - American General and field
marshal of the Philippine Army. Chief of staff of the US Army
and prominent role in WWII. Medal of honor
Samuel Gompers - founder of American Federation of Labor
John Philip Sousa - composer and conductor of the late Ro-
mantic era
Abraham Lincoln - 16th President of the United States
Andrew Carnegie - famous founder for the Carnegie Steel
Company and recognized through Carnegie Mellon and Carn-
egie Libraries
Booker T. Washington - freed from slavery after the Civil War
and went on to become the first President of Tuskegee Insti-
tute and was influential as a diplomatic leader of the African
American community
Woodrow Wilson - 28th President of the United States, helped
found the League of Nations which later became the United
Nations, and was instrumental in helping Europe for the Trea-
ty of Versailles after WWI
C.S. Lewis - considered one of the greatest thinkers of the
20th century, this author taught with J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford
University
Frank Lloyd Wright - World renowned architect who designed
buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum
Albert Einstein - born in 1879, the modern world credits him
with such discoveries of relativity and quantum theory
“It is... nothing short of a miracle that the modern
methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the
holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside
from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; with-
out this it goes to wreak and ruin. It is a very grave mistake
to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can
be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”
--Albert Einstein
Pearl S. Buck - author and Nobel Prize winner
Richard Basseti - Governor of DE
William Blount - U.S. Senator
George Clymer - U.S. Representative
William Few - U.S. Senator
Benjamin Franklin - founding father
William Houston - Lawyer
William S. Johnson - founding father, Connecticut Senator
William Livingston - Governor of NJ
James Madison - 4th U.S. President
George Mason - Justice of VA
John Francis Mercer - U.S. Rep.
Charles Pickney III - Governor of SC
John Rutledge - Chief Justice
Richard D. Spaight - Governor of NC
John Witherspoon - Declaration of Independence signer
George Wythe - Justice of VA

Presidents
George Washington
John Adams - 2nd
John Quincy Adams - 6th
Grover Cleveland - 22nd and 24th
James Garfield - 20th
William Henry Harrison - 9th
Andrew Jackson - 7th
Thomas Jefferson - 3rd
Abraham Lincoln- 16th
James Madison - 4th
Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 32nd
Theodore Roosevelt - 26th
John Tyler - 10th
Woodrow Wilson - 28th

Statesmen
Konrad Adenauer - Chancellor of West Germany, brought
back to power after WWII
Henry Fountain Ashurst - one of first 2 senators from Arizona
William Jennings Bryan - 41st US Secretary of State
Winston Churchill
Henry Clay - Kentucky (senate and House), secretary of state,
3 term speaker of US House
Pierre du Pont - governor of Delaware
Benjamin Franklin
Alexander Hamilton - founding father, political philosopher,
one of America’s first constitutional lawyers, first US Secre-
tary of the Treasury
Patrick Henry - founding father, 1st and 6th governor of Virginia
William Penn - English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher,
founder of the Province of Pennsylvania the English colony
Daniel Webster - 14th and 19th US secretary of state, famous
orator

Military Leaders
Alexander the Great - Greek Ruler
John Barry - Senior Navy Officer
Stonewall Jackson - Civil War General
John Paul Jones - Father of the American Navy
Robert E. Lee - Civil War General
Douglas MacArthur - U.S. General
George Patton - U.S. General
Matthew Perry - naval officer who opened up trade with Japan
John Pershing - U.S. General
David Dixon Porter - Civil War Admiral

U.S. Supreme Court Judges
John Jay - founding father, first chief justice of US
John Marshall - 4th chief justice of Supreme court of US
John Rutledge - 2nd chief justice of supreme court of US
Sandra Day O’Connor - first female member of the supreme
court of US

Scientists
George Washington Carver - scientist, botanist, educator,
inventor, promotion of alternative crops to cotton
Pierre Curie - French physicist, pioneer in crystallography,
magnetism, piezoelectricity, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics
Albert Einstein
Michael Faraday - electrochemist
Oliver Heaviside - physicist and electromagnetism researcher
T.H. Huxley - English biologist
Blaise Pascal - French mathematician, physicist, inventor,
writer, Catholic philosopher
Booker T. Washington - African-American educator, author
and advisor to Republican presidents
Erik Demaine - Popular Science Mag: One of the Most Brilliant
Scientists in America

Artists
William Blake - English poet, painter, printmaker
John Singleton Copley - American painter
Claude Monet - founder of French impressionist painting
Grandma Moses - American folk artist
Charles Peale - American painter, soldier, naturalist
Leonardo da Vinci
“Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so
study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it re-
tains nothing it takes in.”
--Leonardo Da Vinci
Andrew Wyeth - realist painter of regionalist style
Jamie Wyeth - contemporary American realist painter (son of
above)

Religious Leaders
Joan of Arc - French heroine and Catholic saint
William Carey
Jonathan Edwards
Philipp Melanchthon - German reformer, collaborator with
Martin Luther
Dwight L. Moody - founder of Moody Church
John Newton - Anglican clergyman, author of “Amazing grace”
hymn
John Owen
Hudson Taylor - British Protestant Christian missionary to
China, founder of China Inland Mission
John & Charles Wesley - leaders of Methodist movement
Brigham Young - leader in the Latter Day Saint movement
and settler of Western US

Inventors
Alexander Graham Bell - invented the telephone
John Moses Browning - firearms inventor and designer
Peter Cooper - invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commer-
cial locomotive
Thomas Edison - invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, pho-
nograph, and perfected the electric light bulb
Benjamin Franklin - invented the lightning rod
Elias Howe - invented sewing machine
William Lear - airplane creator
Cyrus McCormick - invented grain reaper
Guglielmo Marconi - developed radio
Eli Whitney - invented the cotton gin
Sir Frank Whittle - invented turbo jet engine
Orville and Wilbur Wright - built the first successful airplane

Composers
Irving Berlin - world famous American composer
Anton Bruckner - Austrian composer known for symphonies,
masses and motetes
Noel Coward - English playwright, composer, director, actor
and singer
Felix Mendelssohn - German composer, pianist, organist, and
conductor of early Romantic period
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - prolific and influential compos-
er of Classical era
Francis Poulenc - French composer
John Philip Sousa - French composer
Writers
Hans Christian Anderson - Danish author, fairy tale writer
and poet
Margaret Atwood - famous recent fiction writer
Pearl S. Buck - winner of Pulitzer prize
William F. Buckley, Jr. - American conservative author and
commentator, founder of political magazine National Review
Willa Cather - novels of frontier life
Agatha Christie- British crime writer of novels, short sto-
ries, plays
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) - author
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my educa-
tion.”
 --Mark Twain
Charles Dickens - author
Robert Frost - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Alex Haley
Brett Harte
L. Ron Hubbard
C.S. Lewis
Amy Lowell
Gabriela Mistral
Sean O’Casey
Christopher Paolini - author of #1 NY Times bestseller, Eragon
Isabel Paterson
Beatrix Potter - author of the beloved Peter Rabbit Tales
Carl Sandburg
George Bernard Shaw
Mattie J. T. Stepanek - 11-year-old author of Heartsongs
Mercy Warren
Phillis Wheatley
Walt Whitman
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Educators
Amos Bronson Alcott - innovative teacher, father of Louisa
May Alcott
Catharine Beecher - co-founder of the Hartford Female Semi-
nary
Jill Ker Conway - first woman president of Smith College
Timothy Dwight - President of Yale University
William Samuel Johnson - President of Columbia College
Horace Mann - “Father of the American Common School”
Charlotte Mason - Founder of Charlotte Mason College of Edu-
cation
Fred Terman - President of Stanford University
Frank Vandiver - President of Texas A&M University
Booker T. Washington - Founder of Tuskegee Institute
John Witherspoon - President of Princeton University
Performing Artists
Louis Armstrong - king of jazz
Charlie Chaplin - actor
Whoopi Goldberg - actress
Hanson - sibling singing group
Jennifer Love Hewitt - actress
Yehudi Menuhin - child prodigy violinist
Moffatts - Canadian version of Hanson
Frankie Muniz - child actor
LeAnne Rimes - teen-prodigy country music singer
Barlow Girl - Alyssa, Rebecca, and Lauren Contemporary
Christian Music
Jonas Brothers - Kevin, Joe, and Nick Performers
Jacob Clemente - Broadway Actor

Business Entrepreneurs
Andrew Carnegie - wealthy steel industrialist
Amadeo Giannini - Bank of America’s founder
Horace Greeley - New York Tribune founder
Soichiro Honda - creator of the Honda automobile company
Peter Kindersley - book illustrator and publisher
Ray Kroc - founder of McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain
Jimmy Lai - newspaper publisher; founder of Giordano Inter-
national
Dr. Orison Swett Marden - founder, Success magazine
Adolph Ochs - New York Times founder
Joseph Pulitzer - newspaper publisher; established Pulitzer
Prize
Colonel Harland Sanders - started Kentucky Fried Chicken
Dave Thomas - founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain
Mariah Witcher - founder of Mariah’s Famous Cookies
Daniel Mills - founder of Salem Ridge Press

Others
Abigail Adams - Wife of John Adams; mother of John Quincy
Adams
Ansel Adams - Photographer
Susan B. Anthony - reformer and women’s rights leader
John James Audubon - ornithologist and artist
Clara Barton - Started the Red Cross
Elizabeth Blackwell - first woman in the U.S. to receive a
medical degree
John Burroughs - Naturalist
George Rogers Clark - Explorer
Davy Crockett - frontiersman
Eric Hoffer - social philosopher
Sam Houston - lawyer; first president of the Republic of Texas
Charles Evans Hughes - jurist; Chief Justice
Mary D. Leakey - fossil hunter; wife of Richard Leakey
Tamara McKinney - World Cup Skier
Harriet Martineau - first woman sociologist
Margaret Mead - cultural anthropologist
John Stuart Mill - Free-market Economist
Charles Louis Montesquieu - Philosopher
John Muir - naturalist
Florence Nightingale - Nurse
Thomas Paine - political writer during the American Revolu-
tion
Bill Ridell - Newspaperman
Will Rogers - Humorist
Bertrand Russell - Logician
Jim Ryan - World Runner
Albert Schweitzer - Physician
Sir Ernest Shackleton - Explorer
Herbert Spencer - philosopher, sociologist
Gloria Steinem - founder and long-time editor of Ms. maga-
zine
Jason Taylor - plays in the National Football League
Mary Walker - Civil War physician; recipient of the Congres-
sional Medal of Honor
Lester Frank Ward - “Father of American Sociology”
Martha Washington - wife of George Washington
Frances E. C. Willard - educator, temperance leader, and suf-
fragist
Frank Lloyd Wright - Architect
Elijah ben Solomon Zalman - Jewish scholar
Balaram Stack - Award winning Surfer
Lia Del Priore - Award Winning Gymnast
Taylor Gladstone - Ballerina

Famous Homeschool Parents
Will Smith - singer, actor
Michael Card - singer, songwriter
Mike Farris - lawyer and co-founder of Home School Legal
Defense Association (HSLDA)
Robert Frost - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Christopher Klicka - attorney and Senior Counsel of Home
School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)
Len Munsil - attorney and President of The Center for Arizona
Policy (CAP)
Paul Overstreet - musician, songwriter
Kelly Preston - actress, wife of John Travolta
Mike Smith - lawyer and co-founder of Home School Legal
Defense Association (HSLDA)
John Travolta - actor, pilot
Lisa Whelchel - former actress, “The Facts of Life”, now a pas-
tor’s wife and author
Darrell Waltrip - NASCAR Racer