The Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents

Famous Homeschoolers

Need some proof that homeschooling is a perfectly valid form of education and won’t ruin your child’s chances at a successful future? Here are some examples of the many successes that homeschoolers can attain.

(Let us know of any others we’ve missed in our list!)

U.S. Presidents

  • John Adams
  • John Quincy Adams
  • Grover Cleveland
  • James Garfield
  • William Henry Harrison
  • Andrew Jackson
  • Thomas Jefferson
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • James Madison
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Theodore Roosevelt
  • John Tyler
  • George Washington
  • Woodrow Wilson

Statesmen

  • Konrad Adenauer
  • Henry Fountain Ashurst
  • William Jennings Bryan
  • Winston Churchill
  • Henry Clay
  • Pierre du Pont
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Patrick Henry
  • William Penn
  • Daniel Webster

Military Leaders

  • Alexander the Great – Greek Ruler
  • John Barry – Senior Navy Officer
  • Stonewall Jackson – Civil War General
  • John Paul Jones – Father of the American Navy
  • Robert E. Lee – Civil War General
  • Douglas MacArthur – U.S. General
  • George Patton – U.S. General
  • Matthew Perry – naval officer who opened up trade with Japan
  • John Pershing – U.S. General
  • David Dixon Porter – Civil War Admiral

Scientists

  • George Washington Carver
  • Pierre Curie
  • Albert Einstein
  • Michael Faraday
  • Oliver Heaviside
  • T.H. Huxley
  • Blaise Pascal
  • Booker T. Washington
  • Erik Demaine

Artists

  • William Blake
  • John Singleton Copley
  • Claude Monet
  • Grandma Moses
  • Charles Peale
  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • Andrew Wyeth
  • Jamie Wyeth

Inventors

  • Alexander Graham Bell – invented the telephone
  • John Moses Browning – firearms inventor and designer
  • Peter Cooper – invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commercial locomotive
  • Thomas Edison – invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, phonograph, and perfected the electric light bulb
  • Benjamin Franklin – invented the lightning rod
  • Elias Howe – invented sewing machine
  • William Lear – airplane creator
  • Cyrus McCormick – invented grain reaper
  • Guglielmo Marconi – developed radio
  • Eli Whitney – invented the cotton gin
  • Sir Frank Whittle – invented turbo jet engine
  • Orville and Wilbur Wright – built the first successful airplane

Composers

  • Irving Berlin
  • Anton Bruckner
  • Noel Coward
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • Francis Poulenc
  • John Philip Sousa

Writers

  • Hans Christian Anderson
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Pearl S. Buck
  • William F. Buckley, Jr.
  • Willa Cather
  • Agatha Christie
  • Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
  • Charles Dickens
  • Robert Frost
  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • Alex Haley
  • Brett Harte
  • L. Ron Hubbard
  • C.S. Lewis
  • Amy Lowell
  • Gabriela Mistral
  • Sean O’Casey
  • Christopher Paolini
  • Isabel Paterson
  • Beatrix Potter
  • Carl Sandburg
  • George Bernard Shaw
  • Mattie J. T. Stepanek
  • Mercy Warren
  • Phillis Wheatley
  • Walt Whitman
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder

Educators

  • Amos Bronson Alcott – innovative teacher, father of Louisa May Alcott
  • Catharine Beecher – co-founder of the Hartford Female Seminary
  • Jill Ker Conway – first woman president of Smith College
  • Timothy Dwight – President of Yale University
  • William Samuel Johnson – President of Columbia College
  • Horace Mann – “Father of the American Common School”
  • Charlotte Mason – Founder of Charlotte Mason College of Education
  • Fred Terman – President of Stanford University
  • Frank Vandiver – President of Texas A&M University
  • Booker T. Washington – Founder of Tuskegee Institute
  • John Witherspoon – President of Princeton University

Performing Artists

  • Christina Aguilera
  • Louis Armstrong
  • Barlow Girl
  • Justin Bieber (distance schooling)
  • Charlie Chaplin
  • Jacob Clemente
  • Misty Copeland
  • Miley Cyrus
  • Hilary Duff
  • Billie Eilish
  • Dakota Fanning
  • Taylor Gladstone
  • Selena Gomez
  • Whoopi Goldberg
  • Ryan Gosling
  • Hanson
  • Jennifer Love Hewitt
  • Jonas Brothers
  • Demi Lovato
  • Yehudi Menuhin
  • Moffatts
  • Frankie Muniz
  • Daniel Radcliffe (on-set tutoring)
  • LeAnne Rimes
  • Jaden Smith
  • Willow Smith
  • Britney Spears
  • Hailee Steinfeld
  • Taylor Swift
  • Justin Timberlake
  • Emma Watson (on-set tutoring)
  • Michelle Williams

Business Entrepreneurs

  • Andrew Carnegie – wealthy steel industrialist
  • Amadeo Giannini – Bank of America’s founder
  • Horace Greeley – New York Tribune founder
  • Soichiro Honda – creator of the Honda automobile company
  • Peter Kindersley – book illustrator and publisher
  • Ray Kroc – founder of McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain
  • Jimmy Lai – newspaper publisher; founder of Giordano International
  • Dr. Orison Swett Marden – founder, Success magazine
  • Adolph Ochs – New York Times founder
  • Joseph Pulitzer – newspaper publisher; established Pulitzer Prize
  • Colonel Harland Sanders – started Kentucky Fried Chicken
  • Dave Thomas – founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain
  • Mariah Witcher – founder of Mariah’s Famous Cookies
  • Daniel Mills – founder of Salem Ridge Press

Athletes

  • Jamie Anderson
  • Simone Biles
  • Lia Del Priore
  • Blake Griffin
  • Bethany Hamilton
  • Sage Kotsenburg
  • Joey Logano
  • Tamara McKinney
  • Bode Miller
  • Jim Ryan
  • Maria Sharapova
  • Balaram Stack
  • Jason Taylor
  • Tim Tebow
  • Venus and Serena Williams
  • Shaun White

Others

  • Abigail Adams – Wife of John Adams; mother of John Quincy Adams
  • Ansel Adams – Photographer
  • Susan B. Anthony – reformer and women’s rights leader
  • John James Audubon – ornithologist and artist
  • Clara Barton – Started the Red Cross
  • Elizabeth Blackwell – first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer – anti-Nazi German theologian
  • John Burroughs – Naturalist
  • George Rogers Clark – Explorer
  • Davy Crockett – frontiersman
  • Eric Hoffer – social philosopher
  • Sam Houston – lawyer; first president of the Republic of Texas
  • Charles Evans Hughes – jurist; Chief Justice
  • Mary D. Leakey – fossil hunter; wife of Richard Leakey
  • Harriet Martineau – first woman sociologist
  • Margaret Mead – cultural anthropologist
  • John Stuart Mill – Free-market Economist
  • Charles Louis Montesquieu – Philosopher
  • John Muir – naturalist
  • Florence Nightingale – Nurse
  • Sandra Day O’Connor – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
  • Sam Oosterhoff – youngest elected MPP in Ontario (at age 19)
  • Thomas Paine – political writer during the American Revolution
  • Bill Ridell – Newspaperman
  • Will Rogers – Humorist
  • Bertrand Russell – Logician
  • Albert Schweitzer – Physician
  • Sir Ernest Shackleton – Explorer
  • Herbert Spencer – philosopher, sociologist
  • Gloria Steinem – founder and long-time editor of Ms. magazine
  • Mary Walker – Civil War physician; recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor
  • Lester Frank Ward – “Father of American Sociology”
  • Martha Washington – wife of George Washington
  • Frances E. C. Willard – educator, temperance leader, and suffragist
  • Frank Lloyd Wright – Architect
  • Elijah ben Solomon Zalman – Jewish scholar

Famous Homeschooling Parents

  • Michael Card
  • Robert Frost
  • Paul Overstreet
  • Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith
  • John Travolta and Kelly Preston
  • Lisa Whelchel
  • Darrell Waltrip