How Old Were The Founding Fathers at the Time of the Declaration of Independence?

Is Gen Z going to upend the status quo...we can only pray!

It has now been 249 years since July 4th 1776. The gripes against King George PALE in comparison to what we are up against these days. You can read a number of my stacks to get an idea of how messed up it really is. I was curious about something because a friend was telling me that one of the generation groups is rebelling against technology. Gen Z. Those born between 1997 & 2012. Currently they would be between the ages of 13 - 28 All four of my sons are Millennials born between 1981 and 1996.

My question that I was asking myself was how old were the Founding Fathers when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776?

Many Founding Fathers Were Shockingly Young When The Declaration Of Independence Was Signed In 1776!

Some were older, like Thomas Jefferson who was 33 when he penned the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock who was 39 when he signed it with a large signature stating that King George should be able to read his signature without spectacles, or Benjamin Franklin who was 70, which is one year younger than I am currently. Others were shockingly young — even teenagers. James Monroe, for example, was 18 and Alexander Hamilton was 21. I had no idea!

Realize this people…THESE WERE THE FOUNDING FATHERS! The men we venerate as having started the Great American Experiment that as of right now if failing so miserably they would puke in our laps as to where we have let it fall to. Oh you had no idea did you?

Here's everyone who was younger than 30 on July 4, 1776, including a few signers of the nation-changing document:

• Andrew Jackson, 9

• Deborah Sampson, 15

• James Armistead, 15

• Sybil Ludington, 15

• Joseph Plumb Martin, 15

• Peter Salem, 16

• Peggy Shippen, 16

• Marquis de Lafayette, 18

• James Monroe, 18

• Charles Pinckney, 18

• Henry Lee III, 20

• Gilbert Stuart, 20

• John Trumbull, 20

• Aaron Burr, 20

• John Marshall, 20

• Nathan Hale, 21

• Banastre Tarleton, 21

• Alexander Hamilton, 21

• John Laurens, 21

• Benjamin Tallmadge, 22

• Robert Townsend, 22

• George Rogers Clark, 23

• David Humphreys, 23

• Gouveneur Morris, 24

• Betsy Ross, 24

• William Washington, 24

• James Madison, 25

• Henry Knox, 25

• John Andre, 26

• Thomas Lynch, Jr., 26 (His lifespan was cut short due to the Revolution dying n 1779. He was 26 when he SIGNED the Declaration of Independence! Remember all who did so were considered traitors to King George. )

• Edward Rutledge, 26

• Abraham Woodhull, 26

• Isaiah Thomas, 27 (At the age of 27 he performed the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Worcester, Massachusetts. He also participated in the Battle of Lexington.)

• George Walton, 27 (Also a signer of the Declaration of Independence at the age of 27.)

• John Paul Jones, 28 (As his ship was sinking, he said “I have yet begun to fight!”)

• Bernardo de Galvez, 29

• Thomas Heyward, Jr., 29

• Robert R. Livingston, 29

  

I know a lot of the gens want to blame the boomers, which I am one of, for the screwed up situations that we are all living in. The problem is that most of what has happened was caused by two generations BEFORE the boomers. The ones that ALLOWED the federal reserve act to pass. That ALLOWED the militias to be disbanded. We are strapped with the how to fix the screw ups that were handed to us! and since all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, we boomers as well as the gens that have come along since have pretty much been unable to really do something about this mess. We haven’t had the numbers and the ease we have been able to live our lives has even led to some putting “I’m Spending my Children’s Inheritance” bumper stickers on the gas guzzling mobile RV’s that are driven around as a past time while the younger generations can’t even afford a small home let along a RV. Believe me gens…I’m NOT one of those. I actually gave each of my four sons a car, a road bicycle, a shotgun, a .45 pistol, a .22 rifle and an AR 15 when they each left home. That meant that they didn’t have to buy their own car to start with and since TIME is the only gift we really have to give to someone, I figured that if it took me 100 hours of my life to get the cost of the car covered, that was 100 hours that I gifted them from MY life. I’m not rich so I couldn’t do much better than that.

Back to the subject at hand…

Todd Andrlik wrote: “It’s a simple question — perhaps so basic that it’s been overlooked. How old were the key participants of the American Revolution?

Authors often reveal the age of a particular soldier, politician or other main character in books about the Revolution, but I routinely find myself wondering about their peers at the same time. As it turns out, many Founding Fathers were less than 40 years old in 1776 with several qualifying as Founding Teenagers and Twentysomethings. And though the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, more than a dozen of them were 35 or younger!

“We tend to see them as much older than they were,” said David McCullough in a 2005 speech. “Because we’re seeing them in portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others when they were truly the Founding Fathers — when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court and their hair, if it hadn’t turned white, was powdered white. We see the awkward teeth. We see the elder statesmen. At the time of the Revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s–young woman’s cause.”

A list of ages of important American Revolution characters seems elementary enough, and certainly easy to assemble, yet I wasn’t able to find such a list anywhere I looked online. And I don’t recall ever stumbling upon such an appendix while researching my book, Reporting the Revolutionary War, so I figured I’d just make one. This is a list of ages, from youngest to oldest, of key American Revolution participants, providing the precise age as of July 4, 1776.

I took this list that I found on this linked article and placed it above and linked them all to posts about them on Wikipedia. Thank you Todd for the list. Apparently what it is boiling down to is that THAT generation in the Revolutionary years is the GEN Z generation of that time! Read the Declaration and tell me if we all don’t have more to bitch about today than the founding fathers did!

The Digital Natives Will Revolt—and That’s Good for Everybody

From Wired: From underconsumption and de-influencing to work-life balance and the novelty of no-tech, Gen Z will upend the status quo.

In the late 19th century, before the invention of cinema and radio, every piece of music, performance, oration—even a natural view like a rainbow—was a unique event. Unrepeatable. Cinema and radio changed that, enforcing a massive shift in how we consumed popular culture. Several of the world’s dominant media companies were founded in that moment by men with a relentless sense of awe for the new media. It resulted in a phenomenal lack of restraint—they didn’t think they needed it. This was the future, and it was making them rich. More was obviously better.

Film and radio would eventually be combined into television—creating an even greater detachment from the performance at its core while supplanting human connection with strategic dopamine sparks. Of course people got hooked: More excitement and no effort equaled a better future. When streaming to personal devices became ubiquitous, that future merged even greater profitability with the law of diminishing returns—crushed empathy, spiked anxiety, and social inadequacy all became core to the human experience.

This has ultimately resulted in a general societal malaise, and I think 2025 will be that moment where some facets of society will begin to methodically detach from their screen-based addictions. I predict the leaders of this change will be the Gen Z digital natives for whom the simplicity of techless exchange will hold a similar novelty to its original technological advances.

Gen Z—currently between 13 to 27 years of age—are the people most deeply affected by digital addiction. After all, they were born in the wake of the invention of the internet. Their primary methods of understanding the world have been digital from the start. Actual agency—connection with other humans—has been largely unavailable for school work, coaching, and guidance. Even the informative mundanity of navigating normal life has been relegated to apps: the screen’s dominance institutionalized with all the restrictions and none of the learned experience for surviving them.

Except their instincts. It’s Gen Z’s instincts that are starting to evolve into a dominant force for change in modern society. What things cost—a massive issue for everyone—is driving much of how Gen Z views their priorities. They’re selecting user-generated content over pricey new media. They’re looking for longer meaning from experiences above the short-term gratification of materialism. In a recent US Gallup poll, more than 50 percent of the respondents indicated they don’t trust tech companies, the government, or the justice system. ( I SAY THIS IS FANTASTIC!!! Who could ask for more? I know that I can put my name to this list and I’m a boomer! C.L.)

Gen Z is also embracing the underconsumption-core and de-influencing trends, questioning the values awe-reverent media brought them, and heightening demands for a life-work balance that would have terrorized the generations before them. These are all positive to crucial developments for society.

So, in 2025, I believe the next step will be for Gen Z to embrace the simplicity of techless human exchange—events without the mediation of the ever-corrupting screen. It’s the shock of the new, a novelty as elemental as film in its infancy. It’s scary, sure—unpredictable—a real change in the digital life they/we are so dominated by. But it’s human and dimensional and full of stuff we can’t get online. It’s what we humans are at our messy core, and for all those reasons I believe we’ll see the virtues of screen retraction start to be celebrated, with Gen Z leading the way. (Lead the way men! Lead the way women! But please, don’t blame me. I may be a boomer but I’m one who has been shouting from the tops of the mountains since 1972 a distrust of the government, the JustUS system and now the new tech bull crap that is making our society more disconnected with ANTI social media and digital slavery! I’ll lead the way or at least stand shoulder to shoulder as we take our WORLD back from the psychopathic control freak parasites who are the reason we are in the situation we are in and if we can only understand there is a reason they don’t listen to us. Once that is figured out…maybe a 1000 years of peace? Maybe the Kingdom of God manifesting? I don’t know, but I hope to live to see it! So YES, ditch the “smart phones” and use dumb phones. REFUSE to use digital “money”. REFUSE to support the invisible prison they have been building around us for years. Have the COURAGE to stand and say, KISS MY ASS when they want you to lick their boots. Learn about The War of The Flea and if they want to keep pushing it…start being a flea! Arm up and train…If you live close enough, I’ll help supply the needed kit. C.L.)

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