Can You Guess Which U.S. State Produced the Most Presidents?

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The United States has seen 45 presidents move in and out of office over the course of 229 years. With that many presidents, you would think they would have come from a variety of different states. However, all of the presidents only come from a total of 21 different states, and the state topping the list produced eight of them.

The state that produced the most U.S. presidents is Virginia. The eight men that were born there are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. Very close behind Virginia is Ohio, which produced seven presidents: Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Taft, and Warren Harding.

The other 19 states that serve as the birthplace for U.S. presidents are as follows.

New York (5)

• Martin Van Buren
• Millard Fillmore
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Donald Trump

Massachusetts (4)

• John Adams
• John Quincy Adams
• John F. Kennedy
• George H. W. Bush

North Carolina (2)

• James J. Polk
• Andrew Johnson

Texas (2)

• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Lyndon B. Johnson

Vermont (2)

• Chester A. Arthur
• Calvin Coolidge

South Carolina (1)

• Andrew Jackson

New Hampshire (1)

• Franklin Pierce

Pennsylvania (1)

• James Buchanan

Kentucky (1)

• Abraham Lincoln

New Jersey (1)

• Grover Cleveland

Iowa (1)

• Herbert Hoover

Missouri (1)

• Harry S. Truman

California (1)

• Richard Nixon

Nebraska (1)

• Gerald Ford

Georgia (1)

• Jimmy Carter

Illinois (1)

• Ronald Reagan

Arkansas (1)

• Bill Clinton

Connecticut (1)

• George W. Bush

Hawaii (1)

• Barack Obama

The original birthplace or childhood residency of many of the presidents has been preserved or replicated. In the places where a physical structure isn’t present, a monument or roadside marker has been put up to commemorate the historic significance of that site. While presidents reside in the White House, there are still things presidents pay for on their own. 

These numbers will continue to change over the years as different presidents move into the Oval Office. Who knows, maybe someday one of the western states will top the list as the place that the most commanders-in-chief have been born! Next, check out these little-known talents of some of the U.S. presidents.     

Sources: 

• History: “Which states have produced the most U.S. presidents?”