Quick, name some famous people from Maine. If you got as far as "Stephen King and... uh... the L.L. Bean boot?" you're actually halfway there. So we did the digging for you. Every one of these 12 famous people from Maine was actually born in the Pine Tree State. Not "has a summer place in Kennebunkport." Not "drove through Freeport once for outlet shopping." Born here, birth certificate and everything.
Maine gets treated like the place you go on vacation, eat a lobster roll and leave. But this state has cranked out poets, generals, inventors, a vice president, Oscar winners and the guy who scared the whole world half to death. Fun twist: a few of the early ones were technically born in Massachusetts, because Maine didn't break away and become its own state until 1820. If you've got that born-here pride yourself, the Maine State Pride T-Shirt says it loud and clear.
Dorothea Dix (born 1802, Hampden)
Dix was born in Hampden, back when it was still the District of Maine, and grew up in Worcester. She spent her life going jail to jail and poorhouse to poorhouse, documenting how people with mental illness were being treated, then lobbying state legislatures and Congress until things changed. Her work helped create the first generation of American mental hospitals. When the Civil War broke out, she was named Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union. Today the psychiatric hospital in Bangor carries her name: the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (born 1807, Portland)
"Listen, my children, and you shall hear..." Yup, the guy who made Paul Revere famous was a Portland kid. Longfellow was born on Fore Street in February 1807 and grew up in what's now the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street. He headed to Bowdoin at 15, where he became lifelong friends with Nathaniel Hawthorne, then taught at Harvard. In 1884 he became the first American writer honored with a bust in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, and he's still the only American poet with one there. So a Mainer hangs out with Chaucer.
Hannibal Hamlin (born 1809, Paris)
Paris, Maine, that is. No Eiffel Tower, but it gave us Abraham Lincoln's first vice president. Hamlin was born there in August 1809 and became the first Republican VP when he took office with Lincoln in 1861. Here's the most Maine thing ever: in 1864, while he was still vice president, his militia company got called up, and instead of taking the pass he reported to Fort McClary in Kittery like everybody else and ended up as the company cook. He spent his later years in Bangor, where he died in 1891 while playing cards at a club he'd founded.
Joshua Chamberlain (born 1828, Brewer)
A college professor who became a war hero. Chamberlain was born in Brewer in September 1828 and taught himself Greek just so he could get into Bowdoin. He was teaching there when he joined the 20th Maine. On July 2, 1863, at Little Round Top in Gettysburg, his men held the far end of the Union line against attack after attack, then he ordered a downhill bayonet charge that drove the Confederates off. It earned him the Medal of Honor. At Appomattox, he commanded the Union troops at the surrender ceremony for Lee's infantry. Then he came home and served four terms as governor and later as president of Bowdoin.
Chester Greenwood (born 1858, Farmington)
If your ears are warm this winter, thank Farmington. Greenwood was born there in December 1858, and in 1873, at just 15, he got fed up with freezing ears while ice skating. Wool made him itchy, so he bent two loops out of wire and had his grandmother sew fur onto them. Boom: earmuffs. He patented an improved version and manufactured them in the Farmington area for nearly 60 years. In 1977, the state declared December 21 Chester Greenwood Day, and Farmington still throws him a parade every December.
L.L. Bean (born 1872, Greenwood)
The man behind the boot. Leon Leonwood Bean was born in Greenwood in October 1872, and lost both parents just four days apart when he was 12. Years later, working at his brother's store in Freeport, he came up with a hunting boot: leather tops stitched onto rubber bottoms. He sold 100 pairs in 1912, and when the rubber cracked on most of them, he refunded the customers and fixed the design. That money-back promise became the company's whole personality.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (born 1892, Rockland)
Born in Rockland in February 1892 and raised in Camden, Millay got her big break at 20 with a poem called "Renascence." Someone heard her reciting her poetry at the Whitehall Inn in Camden and was so impressed she offered to pay for Millay to go to Vassar. In 1923 she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. You probably know her line, "My candle burns at both ends." That's every Mainer in July, squeezing in summer before the snow.
John Ford (born 1894, Cape Elizabeth)
Hollywood's greatest Western director was born John Martin Feeney in Cape Elizabeth in February 1894. He grew up in Portland's Irish neighborhood on Munjoy Hill and played fullback at Portland High before heading west. He went on to direct Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath and The Searchers, and he still holds the record for the most Best Director Oscars: four. In 1998, Portland put up a statue of him, across the street from where his dad once owned a pub.
Margaret Chase Smith (born 1897, Skowhegan)
Skowhegan's own trailblazer. Smith was born there in December 1897 and became the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House and Senate. In 1950 she stood up on the Senate floor and called out Joe McCarthy in her "Declaration of Conscience" speech, when most of her colleagues wouldn't. In 1964 she became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major party's convention. She once cast 2,941 straight roll call votes without missing one, and she wore a red rose every single day. That's Maine stubborn, in the best way.
Stephen King (born 1947, Portland)
You knew he'd be here. The King of Horror was born in Portland in September 1947, went to the University of Maine, and broke through with Carrie in 1974, after his wife Tabitha fished the manuscript out of the trash. He's set so many stories in made-up Maine towns that we gave him his own post: check out our guide to the real Maine places behind Derry and more. He still keeps a home in Bangor.
Patrick Dempsey (born 1966, Lewiston)
McDreamy is a Lewiston guy. Dempsey was born there in January 1966 and grew up in nearby Turner and Buckfield. Before Grey's Anatomy, he was a competitive juggler, and in 1981 he took second place in the juniors at the International Jugglers' Association championship. He's also raced at Le Mans. But the thing Maine loves him for is the Dempsey Center, which he helped start at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston after his mom's battles with cancer.
Anna Kendrick (born 1985, Portland)
Portland strikes again. Kendrick was born there in August 1985, went to Deering High, and was nominated for a Tony Award at 12 for the Broadway musical High Society. She went on to Twilight, an Oscar nomination for Up in the Air, the Pitch Perfect movies and voicing Poppy in Trolls. Aca-awesome, and a Mainer.
The Lightning Round: Also Born in Maine
We could keep going till mud season. Milton Bradley was born in Vienna, Maine, in 1836 and launched The Checkered Game of Life, the great-granddaddy of The Game of Life, in 1860. Hiram Maxim was born in Sangerville in 1840, invented the Maxim machine gun, and also patented a mousetrap and hair-curling irons. Sarah Orne Jewett was born in South Berwick in 1849 and wrote The Country of the Pointed Firs. Magazine king Cyrus Curtis was born in Portland in 1850, ran the Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, and gave Portland its famous Kotzschmar Memorial Organ. Painter Marsden Hartley was born in Lewiston in 1877. And Portland also gave us Linda Lavin, star of TV's Alice and a Tony winner, in 1937, and Judd Nelson, John Bender himself from The Breakfast Club, in 1959.
Wait, Where's E.B. White?
He's the one everybody assumes. White bought a saltwater farm in North Brooklin in 1933, lived there for decades, and that farm inspired Charlotte's Web. He's even buried in Brooklin. But he was born in Mount Vernon, New York, so under our born-here rule he doesn't make the list. Same goes for Andrew Wyeth, whose Christina's World shows a farmhouse in Cushing, Maine, but who was born in Pennsylvania. Mainers by choice, and we'll take 'em, but they're "from away."
Proud to Be a Mainer
So next time somebody says nothing happens up in Maine, hit 'em with this list. The poet who made Paul Revere famous, the hero of Little Round Top, the inventor of earmuffs, the boot that runs on a promise, a vice president who cooked for his militia, four Best Director Oscars and the guy who made every storm drain in America creepy. Not bad for a state that's mostly trees and moose.
Wear it proud with the American "Maineiac" USA T-Shirt, whether you were born here, moved here, or just count down the days till you're back over the bridge in Kittery.
Stay wicked,
Ryan and the Chowdaheadz crew