Quick, name some famous people from Connecticut. If you froze up and said "uh... Jonathan the Husky?" don't worry, you're not alone. So we did the homework for you. Every one of these 12 famous people from Connecticut was actually born in the Nutmeg State. Not "summered in Greenwich." Not "took one class at Yale." Born here, birth certificate and everything.
Connecticut gets treated like the hallway between Boston and New York, the state you crawl through on 95 while yelling at the traffic. But a ridiculous number of patriots, showmen, Oscar winners and one actual president came into the world right here. If you've got the same paperwork, the Born Into It Connecticut T-Shirt says it for you, no explaining required.
Ethan Allen (born 1738, Litchfield)
Yes, the Vermont guy. The leader of the Green Mountain Boys and one of the founders of Vermont was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in January 1738. In a dawn raid in May 1775, he and his crew captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British, one of the early American wins of the Revolution. Vermont gets the statues, but Connecticut has the birth certificate. And yes, the furniture company is named after him, even though it was founded in Beecher Falls, Vermont, in 1932, long after he was gone.
Nathan Hale (born 1755, Coventry)
Connecticut's official state hero, and it isn't close. Born in Coventry in 1755, Hale went off to Yale at 14, graduated with first-class honors at 18, and taught school in East Haddam and New London before joining the fight. He volunteered for a spy mission in New York, got caught by the British, and was executed in September 1776 at just 21. Tradition says his last words were "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." The state made him its official hero in 1985.
Noah Webster (born 1758, West Hartford)
Every time you spell "color" without a U, thank a guy from West Hartford. Webster was born on October 16, 1758, in what was then the western part of Hartford, and his childhood home is now the Noah Webster House museum. He graduated from Yale in 1778, wrote the "Blue-Back Speller" that taught generations of American kids to read, and published his big American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. Fun fact: John Mayer was born on the very same date, 219 years later. Webster probably would've had notes on how we spell "chowdah."
P.T. Barnum (born 1810, Bethel)
The greatest showman on Earth was born in Bethel on July 5, 1810. Barnum made his name on hoaxes and spectacles like the "Fiji mermaid" and General Tom Thumb, then started his famous circus when he was 60 years old. Back home, Bridgeport elected him mayor in 1875, and he helped get Bridgeport Hospital off the ground. And that line "there's a sucker born every minute"? There's no evidence he ever actually said it, which might be the most Barnum thing of all.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (born 1811, Litchfield)
Litchfield strikes again. Stowe was born there in June 1811 into the Beecher family, a clan absolutely loaded with preachers, and went on to write Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the anti-slavery novel that reached millions of readers and fired up the North. New England bonus round: she was living in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband taught at Bowdoin, when the idea for the book took hold. She spent her later years in Hartford, right next door to a guy named Mark Twain. Talk about a block party.
Frederick Law Olmsted (born 1822, Hartford)
You've walked through this guy's work and never knew it. Born in Hartford in April 1822, Olmsted is called the father of American landscape architecture. He co-designed Central Park in New York, then came up our way and designed Boston's Emerald Necklace, the chain of parks that runs about seven miles from the Common out to Franklin Park. He ran his firm out of his home, Fairsted, in Brookline, which is now a National Historic Site. When he passed, he was laid to rest back home in Hartford's Old North Cemetery.
Katharine Hepburn (born 1907, Hartford)
Hartford's own leading lady. Hepburn was born there on May 12, 1907, and she still holds the record for the most Best Actress Oscars: four. She played headstrong, sharp-witted women on screen and was pretty much the same in real life. Her happy place was the family beach house in Fenwick, down in Old Saybrook, which she called her "other paradise." Today the town's arts center carries her name, and everybody just calls it "The Kate."
George W. Bush (born 1946, New Haven)
Here's the one that wins bar bets. The 43rd president, Texas drawl and all, was born at Grace-New Haven Hospital on July 6, 1946, while his dad was a student at Yale. The family headed to Texas when he was little, but the paperwork says Connecticut, which makes him the only U.S. president born in the state. He came back for Yale, then picked up an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975. So technically, he's a New Englander in a cowboy hat.
John Ratzenberger (born 1947, Bridgeport)
Cliff Clavin, the know-it-all mailman parked at the end of the bar on Cheers, is a Bridgeport guy. Ratzenberger was born there in April 1947, went to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, and actually pitched the bar know-it-all character to the show's producers himself. Bonus trivia Cliff would love: he worked at Woodstock in 1969 as a heavy equipment operator, and he's been Pixar's good-luck charm since Toy Story, starting as Hamm the piggy bank. It's a little-known fact that he's a Nutmegger.
Meg Ryan (born 1961, Fairfield)
America's Sweetheart of the '90s is a Fairfield County kid. Meg Ryan was born in Fairfield on November 19, 1961, graduated from Bethel High in 1979, and studied journalism at UConn before heading to NYU. Then came Top Gun, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle, the last two of which landed on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest romantic comedies ever. Not bad for a girl from the land of stone walls and Dunkin' drive-thrus.
Suzanne Collins (born 1962, Hartford)
The woman who gave the world The Hunger Games was born in Hartford on August 10, 1962. Her dad was an Air Force officer, so the family moved around a lot, and she wrote for Nickelodeon shows like Clarissa Explains It All before The Hunger Games hit shelves in 2008. These days she lives in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown. So the biggest dystopia of the century came from a Nutmegger. May the odds be ever in your favor on I-84.
Seth MacFarlane (born 1973, Kent)
Kent is a tiny town up in Litchfield County, and it gave us the guy behind Family Guy. MacFarlane was born there on October 26, 1973, graduated from the Kent School in 1991, and studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. Fitting, since Family Guy is set in the made-up town of Quahog, Rhode Island, and he voices Peter, Stewie, Brian and Quagmire himself. Fun twist: the Kent School headmaster once campaigned to get advertisers to drop the show. Nothing says small-town New England like your old principal still keeping tabs on you.
The Lightning Round: Also Born in Connecticut
We could keep going all day. Christopher Lloyd, aka Doc Brown, was born in Stamford in 1938. Glenn Close, an eight-time Oscar nominee, was born in Greenwich in 1947. Michael Bolton was born in New Haven in 1953, and so was Paul Giamatti in 1967, whose dad Bart Giamatti was president of Yale and later commissioner of baseball. John Mayer was born in Bridgeport in 1977, grew up in Fairfield, and did a stint at Berklee in Boston before he got famous. And Benedict Arnold was born in Norwich in 1741, but we don't really bring him up at parties.
Wait, Where's Mark Twain?
He's the one everybody assumes. Twain lived in Hartford for 17 years, and Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and, yes, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court all came out while he lived there. But he was born in Florida, Missouri, so under our born-here rule he doesn't make the list. Go see his house in Hartford anyway. It's right next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe's.
Proud to Be a Nutmegger
So next time somebody calls Connecticut the drive-through state, hit 'em with this list. Revolutionary heroes, a president, the father of the American dictionary, the greatest showman, four Oscars' worth of Hepburn and a mailman who knows everything. Not bad for the third-smallest state in the country.
Wear it proud with the Love Connecticut T-Shirt, whether you were born here, moved here, or just miss it every time you cross the line into Mass.
Stay wicked,
Ryan and the Chowdaheadz crew