Discover the Only 2 Presidents Ever Born in Pennsylvania

William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a British colony in 1681. The city of Philadelphia served as the first capital of the United States during the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both signed in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House, known today as Independence Hall. Given Pennsylvania’s long history and its centrality in forming the United States of America, it may be a bit surprising that only two U.S. presidents were born in the state. Here are the two U.S. Chief Executives that were born in the Keystone State.

1. James Buchanan

James Buchanan served as the 15th president of the United States and was the first to be born in Pennsylvania. The official White House website lists Buchanan as “the only President to be elected from Pennsylvania.” Though he was one of two presidents born in Pennsylvania, he remains the only one that claimed Pennsylvania as his home state throughout his life.

Buchanan’s Birthplace

Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, located in south-central Pennsylvania, on April 23, 1791, making him the last president born in the 18th century. He was born to parents Elizabeth Speer and James Buchanan, Sr.

Cove Gap is an unincorporated and remote area in Franklin County today, but it was bustling with commerce and activity at the time of Buchanan’s birth.

Buchanan was born in a log cabin owned by his father. The cabin was part of a larger complex known as Stony Batter. Stony Batter was named after the senior Buchanan’s homeland in Northern Ireland. It was a hub of frontier business, with stables, barns, an orchard, and a general store. As pioneers and settlers traveled westward, they often stopped at Stony Batter for rest and supplies. Buchanan lived at Stony Batter for the first six years of his life.

Mercersburg and Lancaster

The Buchanan family then moved to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. Today, the borough is less than one square mile in size and has a population of approximately 1,500. Buchanan’s father became the wealthiest man in Mercersburg, working as a farmer, real estate investor, and merchant.

Buchanan moved to Lancaster after graduating from Dickinson College. He would live in the city for the remainder of his life, except for his stints as the United States Ambassador to Russia under President Andrew Jackson, Ambassador to Great Britain under President Franklin Pierce, and his own time in the White House as president.

Lancaster was the capital of Pennsylvania when Buchanan first took up residence there. It was later moved to Harrisburg, the current capital of the Commonwealth, in 1812. 

Lancaster is located 71 miles west of Philadelphia on the Susquehanna River. Today, Lancaster has a city population north of 58,000 and a metro population of nearly 553,000, making it the eleventh-largest municipality in Pennsylvania.

Buchanan Birthplace State Park

Today, Buchanan’s Birthplace State Park is located on the former site of Stony Batter. While the cabin where the 15th president was born is long gone, a pyramid-shaped monument made of native stone now stands on the site. The monument was the dream of Harriet Lane Johnston, Buchanan’s niece.

Buchanan remains the only president to never marry. In the absence of a First Lady, Johnston performed many of the hosting duties for the Buchanan White House (she was then known as Harriet Lane as she would not marry Henry Elliott Johnston until later in life). Buchanan was her favorite uncle and served as her guardian after she was orphaned at the age of eleven.

In her later years, Johnston sought to purchase the land where Stony Batter once stood in order to memorialize her beloved uncle. In her will, she created a trust with the express purpose of continuing the effort. Johnston died in 1903, so she never saw the fruits of her efforts. The trust purchased the former Stony Batter land in 1907, and the monument was constructed. It was accepted by the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1911, and Buchanan’s Birthplace State Park was created.

Today, along with the monument, the small 18.5-acre park features two pavilions, potable water, and trout fishing opportunities in Buck Run. Tuscarora Trail is located just to the west of the park. It serves as a bypass trail for the Appalachian Trail.

Wheatland

Buchanan purchased a home outside of Lancaster that is known as Wheatland. He retired to Wheatland at the conclusion of his presidency. It is where he would live out his remaining years. He died in a room on the second floor on June 1, 1868.

Today, Wheatland is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Public tours are available. The home is furnished with period pieces, many of which belonged to Buchanan. 

2. Joe Biden

The other U.S. president born in Pennsylvania is the 46th and current president, Joe Biden.

Biden was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1942, to Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (Both Pennsylvania presidents were named after their fathers.)

Biden was born as World War II raged overseas. His father profited from the war when he was given a job in a major manufacturing company producing sealant for ships. Biden, Sr. moved his young family from Scranton after he was offered the opportunity to oversee the company’s Boston office.

The lucrative work made Biden Sr. quite wealthy, and he was known for racing cars, playing polo, and enjoying other activities reserved for the upper class.  He also purchased a home in Garden City, a well-to-do Long Island suburb.

However, the end of the war brought big changes. After a few business ventures went belly up, Biden, Sr. was forced to move the family back to Scranton. They lived with Biden’s maternal grandparents during this season. 

Fighting to Prove Himself

While in Scranton, Biden wrestled to overcome a stutter. The speech impediment made him the target of bullies and relentless teasing during his formative years. To compensate, Biden often sought to prove himself by whatever means necessary, including climbing a culm mountain on a five-dollar bet. Culm is fine-grained waste from anthracite coal. The mountains of culm in industrial Scranton were dangerous places for children, to say the least. If a child were to step on a weak spot in a mountain of culm, that child could fall through and be swallowed up by the still-smoldering center of the culm mound. As a child, Biden scaled a culm mountain, not just to win five dollars, but more as an effort to prove that he was more than his stutter.

The Biden Family’s Move to Delaware

Biden lived in Scranton until his father could no longer find steady work during the city’s economic downturn. Biden, Sr. got a job as a used car salesman in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1953. The family moved to Delaware when Biden was eleven years old, and has been his home ever since. He famously commuted via Amtrak trains to Washington, D.C., and back to Delaware each day while working as a senator.

Scranton Today

Scranton, the city where Biden was born, is the largest city in Northeast Pennsylvania, with a population of over 76,000 today. The metro area of Scranton, Wilkes Barre, and Hazelton has over 560,000 residents. 

Biden returned to his modest childhood home in the Scranton suburb of Green Ridge at the end of the 2020 presidential campaign. While inside the home, he signed the living room wall with this message: “From this house to the White House with the grace of God. Joe Biden 11-3-2020.”

The Pennsylvanian Presidencies

Buchanan

Before he was elected to the presidency, Buchanan served in the previously mentioned ambassadorships, as well as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and the Secretary of State in President James K. Polk’s administration.

The Buchanan Presidency

As president, the Buchanan administration oversaw an increasingly divided nation in the lead-up to the American Civil War. While Buchanan personally viewed slavery as a moral evil, he also believed the federal government did not have the power to criminalize it. The infamous Dred Scott decision was delivered just two days into Buchanan’s presidency. In this decision, the Supreme Court asserted that Congress had no constitutional power to regulate slave ownership or transport in U.S. territories, thus rendering the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Further, the decision blocked any persons of African descent from attaining U.S. citizenship. Buchanan supported and possibly even influenced this decision. 

This decision further inflamed the sectarianism between the free states of the North and the slaveholding states of the South. Buchanan’s push to admit Kansas to the Union as a slaveholding state deepened the divide even more.

When the newly-formed Republican party gained control of the House of Representatives in 1858, any movement of the federal government came to a halt. All significant bills passed by the Republican House were stopped by the Democrat-controlled Senate or by Buchanan’s presidential veto. 

Southern Secession

Buchanan did little to stop the rising tensions in the nation. He did not seek a second term in office. His successor, Abraham Lincoln, was elected to the presidency in November 1860. A little over a month later, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Buchanan did virtually nothing to stop states from seceding in his remaining days in office, believing he had no constitutional authority to intervene. 

In his inaugural speech, Buchanan committed to only serving one term as president. He was only too glad to honor that commitment since he hated being president. When he met with Lincoln, who was preparing to take office, Buchanan purportedly said to him, “My dear sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed.”

Because of his refusal to quell the spread of slavery and to challenge the rise of the Confederacy, Buchanan is consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in American history. Many surveys award him the dubious distinction of being the very worst among all U.S. presidents.

Biden

Before he was elected president of the United States, Biden served as a U.S. senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009, making him the state’s longest-serving U.S. senator and the 19th longest-serving senator in U.S. history.

During his time in the Senate, Biden served as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Biden’s Presidential Bids

Biden launched a failed presidential bid in 1987, losing out to the eventual Democratic party nominee, Michael Dukakis. He declared his presidential candidacy again in 2007 but lost his party’s nomination to Barack Obama. However, Obama would later announce Biden as his running mate on August 22, 2008. Biden would serve two terms as vice president under President Obama. Biden would finally win the office that he had long sought when he won the 2020 presidential election, defeating incumbent Donald Trump.

The Biden Presidency

As the current president, the story of the Biden administration is still being written. Biden is the oldest person to be elected president. He was 78 when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, is the first woman ever to hold that office.

As is the case for every administration, there is no shortage of opinions and analysis of the Biden presidency. Given the political biases that naturally exist in a contemporary context, historical evaluations of presidencies are best performed long after they end. This allows the passions and tensions of the moment to cool and for a presidential administration to be more fairly evaluated by historians. 

Presidential States

Less than half of U.S. states have been the birthplace of a president. Only twenty-one states have that distinction, although eight presidents were actually born in British colonies rather than U.S. states. 

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and William Henry Harrison were born in the Virginia colony. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were born in the Massachusetts colony, and Andrew Jackson was born in the South Carolina colony (although some claim he was born in the Waxhaw Region of North Carolina). 

Pennsylvania joins North Carolina, Texas, and Vermont as the states that have produced two presidents.

Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and South Carolina have all borne one president. 

Four presidents were born in Massachusetts, five in New York, seven in Ohio, and eight in Virginia.

Martin Van Buren was the first president born in a U.S. state rather than a colony, making him the first president born an American citizen rather than a British subject. He was born in Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © Andreas Reps/Shutterstock.com