Massachusetts

Abigail Adams

Wife of John Adams, mother of John Quincy Adams; 1744—1818.

John Adams

Signer of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat, second President; 1735—1826.

John Quincy Adams

Son of John and Abigail Adams, diplomat, senator, sixth President, congressman; 1767—1848.

Samuel Adams

Political philosopher, Boston revolutionary leader, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Massachusetts governor; 1722—1803.

Mather Brown

American painter, active in England; 1761—1831.

John Singleton Copley

American painter, principally active in London after 1774; 1738—1815.

Thomas Gage

British general, Royal Governor of Massachusetts, ordered troops to Concord; 1719/20—87.

Elbridge Gerry

Signer of the Declaration of Independence, vice president under Madison; 1744—1814.

John Hancock

Boston merchant, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Massachusetts governor; 1737—93.

Mocking idleness and turning labor [in the North] into a badge of honor made the South, with its leisured aristocracy supported by slavery, seem even more anomalous than it had been at the time of the Revolution, thus aggravating the growing sectional split in the country. Many Southern aristocrats began emphasizing their cavalier status in contrast to the money-grubbing northern Yankees. They were fond of saying that they were real gentlemen, a rare thing in America.

— Gordon S. Wood

Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)