Millennials get a bad rap from Baby Boomers. And for what? Because they’re young? Naïve? Inexperienced? Well guess what, many of America’s founding fathers were NOT “wise old men” when they helped launch this country. They were young, fresh faces when they signed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, many would be considered millennials today.
This reality smacked me in the face during a recent visit to Philadelphia, home of the Liberty Bell, The Museum of the American Revolution, and the National Constitution Center. In the latter’s Signers Hall are 42 life-size bronze statues of those who signed – and refused to sign – our blueprint for democracy. A plate is embedded at the feet of each statue, with the name and age of that person on September 17, 1787.
Looking down I was shocked at what I saw.
Plate after plate showed founders in their 20s, 30s or 40s. They were young men in 1787 – and even younger 11 years earlier when many signed the Declaration of Independence.
An article by the Millennial Action Project confirms this, stating “Most of the Founding Fathers were under the age of 40 on July 4, 1776, and would more rightly be considered ‘founding teenagers’ or young adults” today. The average age of the singers? Just 44. Here’s a breakdown of the signers of the Declaration:
4 signers were in their 20s.
Thomas Lynch and Edward Rutledge were 26. George Walton was 27, Thomas Heyward Jr. was 29.
16 signers were in their 30s.
Benjamin Rush was 30, Elbridge Gerry was 31. Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration was 33. So was Thomas Stone. Twelve more signers were from 34 to 39, including John Hancock, the man whose huge signature dominates the document – he was just 39 at the time.
5 signers were in their early 40s.
John Adams was only 40 years old. Francis Lightfoot Lee was 41. Robert Morris, Thomas McKean and George Read were 42. And so on and so on.
Today they’d all be called millennials.
At the same time, these founding fathers, who were NOT signers, were also millennials: Marquis de Lafayette and James Monroe were 18. Aaron Burr was 20. Alexander Hamilton was 21, James Madison was 25.
Why even good old Betsy Ross was just 24 years old the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. So she helped design and sew the first flag as a 20-something – not a senior citizen.
So why do we think of the founders as “old and wise?”
“We tend to see them as much older than they were,” explained historian David McCullough, “because we’re seeing them in portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others … when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court …. we see the elder statesmen, (but) at the time of the revolution, they were all young.” So were the artists who later painted them. John Trumbull and Gilbert Stewart were just 20 and 21 in 1776 and Charles Wilson Peale was 35. Two of them put their art careers on hold, to take up arms. Trumbull as an aide de camp to George Washington, and Stewart was a young officer who sketched as he went.
Other youngsters of the Revolution.
Even the great nemesis of America, King George the III, was just 33 years old in 1776. His General Charles Cornwallis was 37. And George Washington, their adversary, who was already in the field with the Continental Army, was just 44.
So this Revolution stuff, this Declaration of Independence thing – was a young person’s game. Many of our founding fathers – and those in authority who opposed them – were millennials in 1776 and 1787. Boomers should think about that, the next time they’re about to harrass a Millennial or Gen Xer.
Sources include Journal of the American Revolution, accessed 6-28-2022: https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/08/ages-of-revolution-how-old-1776/#:~:text=And%20though%20the%20average%20age,McCullough%20in%20a%202005%20speech )
MillenialAction.org, accessed 6-28-2022: https://www.millennialaction.org/blog/the-founding-fathers-were-the-1776-millennials-1 )
Slate accessed 8-15-2024 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/08/how-old-were-the-founding-fathers-the-leaders-of-the-american-revolution-were-younger-than-we-imagine.html
