Born in the 1700s

John Woolman, born October 19, 1720
John Woolman was the fourth child and eldest son in a family of thirteen children belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).  His father Samuel Woolman was a farmer. The family farm was in Burlington County of the New Jersey colony.  John was named after his father's father, one of the early Quaker settlers of New Jersey.  John Woolman died 87 years before the Civil War began.

Robert Carter III, born February 28, 1727
Robert Carter III was born in Virginia in 1727, the son of Robert Carter II and Priscilla Churchill. He died more than 60 years before the Civil War.









John Laurens, born October 28, 1754

John Laurens was born on October 28, 1754 to Henry Laurens and and Eleanor Ball  Laurens in Charleston, South Carolina. The Laurens family were Huguenots who fled France for religious liberty. John Laurens died on August 27, 1782 at the age of 27, just weeks before the end of the Revolutionary War and 79 years before the start of the Civil War.

Roger Taney, born March 17, 1777
Roger Brooke Taney was born March 17, 1777. He was the third child and the second son of seven (four sons and three daughters) born to a slaveholding family of Roman Catholic tobacco planters in Calvert County, Maryland. He was 84 years old when the Civil War began, and died 3 years later, before it ended.

Henry Clay, born April 12, 1777

Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, at the Clay homestead in Hanover County, Virginia. He was born two years after the Revolutionary War began, and died nine years before the Civil War began.












John Calhoun, born March 18, 1782

John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782, the fourth child and third son of Patrick Calhoun and his second wife, Martha Caldwell, in Abbeville District, South Carolina. He was born a year before the Revolutionary War ended, and died 11 years before the Civil War began.

John McLean, born March 11, 1785

John McLean was born in Morris County, New Jersey, on March 11, 1785, the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford. He was born two years after the end of the Revolutionary War, and died a week before the beginning of the Civil War.

William R. King, born April 7, 1785

William Rufus DeVane King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, the second son of William King and Margaret DeVane. He died 8 years before the Civil War began.

Benjamin Lundy
born January 4, 1789
Benjamin Lundy was born to Quaker parents at Greensville in Sussex County, New Jersey.  He was the only child of Joseph and Elizabeth Shotwell Lundy.  His mother died when he was four years old, and he was raised by his stepmother, Mary Titus Lundy.  As a boy, he worked on his father's farm, attending school for only brief periods.  He died 22 years before the Civil War began.

Thomas Garrett, 

born August 21, 1789
Thomas Garrett was born on August 21, 1789, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, the son of Thomas Garret, Sr. and Sarah Price Garrett, members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Thomas was the third surviving son of eleven children. The family lived on their homestead,"Thornfield," in Delaware County. As abolitionists, the family hid runaway slaves in their farmhouse The family's house still stands today in what is now Drexel Hill. Thomas Garrett was 71 years old when the Civil War began.

Thaddeus Stevens, born April 4, 1792

Thaddeus Stevens was born in Danville, Vermont on April 4, 1792.   He was 69 years old when the Civil War began.

Lucretia Coffin Mott 
born January 3, 1793
Lucretia Coffin, born on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts,  was the second child of Anna Folger and Thomas Coffin, Jr.  Her parents were Quakers; Thomas Coffin was a ship captain, and Anna Coffin was a shopkeeper.  On April 10, 1811, at the age of 18, Lucretia Coffin married James Mott at Pine Street Meeting in Philadelphia.  Mott was 68 years old when the Civil War began; she and her husband were living in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in April 1861.

John Rankin, 
born Febuary 5, 1793
John Rankin was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee , the fourth son of Richard and Jane Steele Rankin. Following the birth of their first son, Richard and Jane Rankin had moved to eastern Tennessee from Virginia.  Richard and Jane Rankin would raise eleven sons and one daughter.  Religion and reading played key roles in their childhoods. They were staunch Presbyterians; Jane “earnestly opposed the use of whiskey and tobacco, and zealously spoke against Free Masonry”. She also strongly opposed dance and frolicking in any form. The most important and lasting impression Jane made on John was her unyielding opposition to slavery.
He was 68 years old when the Civil War began.


Joseph Vann, born February 11, 1798

Joseph Vann was born at Spring Place, Georgia on February 11, 1798. Vann died 17 years before the Civil War began.

Levi Coffin, born October 28, 1798
Levi Coffin was born on a farm near New Garden in Guilford County, North Carolina, the son of Levi Coffin Sr. and Prudence Williams Coffin.  He was a descendant of Tristam Coffin, who came to America in 1642 and was one of nine purchasers of Nantucket from the Indians.  Levi's father had been born in in 1763.  In 1773, before the American Revolution, a large group of Quakers emigrated from Nantucket to North Carolina; Levi's grandfather, William Coffin, established a family farm in the New Garden community. William and Priscilla Coffin had ten children--eight sons and two daughters--all of whom lived to have families of their own. All were members of the Religious Society of Friends. Levi Coffin was 62 years old when the Civil War began.

Simon Cameron, born March 9, 1799

Simon Cameron was born in Maytown, Pennsylvania, the third son of Charles Cameron, a poor tailor, and Martha Pfoutz. He was 62 years old when the Civil War began.