Edited By Alex Knapp and Michael Noer, Forbes Staff

Reported by Jessica Jacolbe

Abraham Lincoln once wrote to a young man who asked him for advice to “always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”

That sentiment is at the heart of an American principle that Honest Abe himself embodied: that unlike in the Old World, in the United States, anyone can rise to the top. So in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary, we present to you the 250 Greatest Historic Self-Made Americans–men and women who rose from slavery, poverty, abuse to achieve fame, fortune and impact. (Our ranking of the 250 Greatest Living Self-Made Americans is available here.)

To identify these hustlers and strivers, we dug into Forbes’ century-plus-old archives, looking for classic tales of entrepreneurial capitalists. Then we queried Gemini and ChatGPT for ideas. We also polled the historical societies of all 50 states, because although we emphasized notable businessmen and industrialists, we also included influential scientists, artists and athletes.

Next, we ran those names past the experts: Louis Hyman, a professor of political economy in history at Johns Hopkins University and Abbylin Sellers, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. Forbes editors determined the final ranking.

The Greatest Historic Self-Made Americans

#1. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Before he saved the Union, the 16th president of the United States grew up in abject poverty. He was largely self-educated and had a variety of jobs ranging from store clerk to wrestler to rail splitter (cutting logs for fences) before he taught himself the law and became an attorney. After a stint in the House of Representatives, his 1858 failed run for the Senate vs. Stephen Douglas propelled him to national prominence. He won the presidency in 1860 in a heated four-way race with less than 40% of the popular vote.

#2. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

The steel magnate’s family borrowed money to immigrate to the U.S. from Scotland after the Industrial Revolution rendered his father’s weaving business obsolete. Upon arrival in Pittsburgh, at age 13, he began working in a cotton mill, educating himself thanks to a local benefactor who opened his private library to neighborhood children. He used savvy investments (railroads, bridges) and sold bonds to build up his capital before founding the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. He financed more than 2,500 public libraries around the world. The first was built in his birthplace of Dunfermline, Scotland.

#3. John Jacob Astor (1763-1848)

America’s first multimillionaire was the son of a struggling German butcher who emigrated to London and New York. Astor started working as a butcher in his brother’s shop before becoming a leading force in the American fur trade, using the proceeds to build a real estate empire in New York City.

#4. Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804)

The ten-dollar Founding Father was born out of wedlock on Nevis, in the Leeward Islands, and was effectively orphaned and left penniless when his mother died when he was 13. He became a clerk in an import-export firm on Saint Croix before moving to New York in 1772. After attending King’s College (now Columbia University), he rose through the ranks during the Revolution, becoming Washington’s right-hand man. He later was a key figure in the adoption of the Constitution and the prime architect of America’s financial system.

#5. Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, the abolitionist leader honed his business skills early, managing to earn wages even before escaping to New York City and freedom in 1838. His autobiography became a bestseller, and in the 1840s he launched a successful newspaper, The North Star. After the Civil War, Douglass became an adviser to presidents and was appointed U.S. Marshal.

#6. H. Ross Perot (1930-2019)

The salesman who famously met his annual IBM quota in less than a month grew up during the Great Depression in Texas, delivering newspapers on horseback. In 1962, he launched Electronic Data Systems, which he sold to GM for $2.5 billion. He subsequently founded Perot Systems, which he sold to Dell for $3.9 billion in 2009. In between he made two third-party runs for the White House, garnering nearly 20% of the vote in 1992.

#7. Milton Hershey (1857-1945)

Born into Pennsylvania’s German-speaking Mennonite community, Hershey’s first home was a hardscrabble farm near Harrisburg. He dropped out in fourth grade to become a printer’s apprentice. On the road to candy dominance, he suffered several bankruptcies before selling his Lancaster Caramel Company, which gave him the seed cash for his milk chocolate empire.

#8. Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

Born in segregated Baltimore, Marshall was rejected by the University of Maryland due to his race and earned his law degree at Howard University. He then became a legendary litigator, winning landmark rulings such as Brown v. Board of Education before becoming the first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967.

#9. Maggie Lena Walker (1864-1919)

Walker’s father was murdered when she was young, leaving only her formerly enslaved mother to care for her. She took command of a Virginia-based mutual aid society that was on the brink of financial ruin and turned it into a thriving conglomerate. She was the first Black woman to charter and operate a bank, which provided loans that helped build the Black middle class in Richmond, Virginia.

#10. Bernard Marcus (1929-2024)

The cofounder of The Home Depot was raised on the fourth floor of a walk-up tenement in Newark, New Jersey. Unable to afford medical school, he earned a pharmacy degree instead but ended up working as an executive at a regional hardware chain, from which he and Arthur Blank were fired. The pair started The Home Depot in 1979, growing it into a multibillion-dollar concern.

#11. Levi Strauss (1829-1902)

The blue jean pioneer grew up in a poor German village before his widowed mother brought him to America.

#12. Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)

Orphaned at 14, the seventh president used his legal practice–and land speculation–to amass a fortune.

#13. Romana Acosta Bañuelos (1925-2018)

Deported as a child to Mexico despite being a U.S. citizen, she came back to California as an adult, where she founded a multimillion-dollar tortilla business, served as chair of Pan-American National Bank and became the Treasurer of the United States in 1971.

#14. David Murdock (1923-2025)

A high school dropout, he bought a small restaurant after serving in World War II and eventually parlayed its success into fruit and veggies giant Dole.

#15. Peter Peterson (1926-2018)

The cofounder of private equity giant Blackstone spent his childhood working at his parents’ small diner in Kearney, Nebraska.

#16. Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

Before he was the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis was born into a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, where his family relied on neighbors and government food assistance to survive.

#17. Rocco Commisso (1949-2026)

The founder of cable TV giant Mediacom worked as an accordion player in movie theaters as a kid to help support his family.

#18. Elizabeth Arden (1881-1966)

The child of tenant farmers, the cosmetics mogul supported herself as a nurse’s assistant before moving to New York in 1908 and opening her first salon.

#19. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

The Founding Father ran away from his Boston home as a youth, moving to Philadelphia where he became America’s first media tycoon.

#20. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The Huckleberry Finn author’s father died when Twain was 11, leaving his family in dire financial straits.

#21. Jesse Owens (1913-1980)

Owens picked cotton as a child with his sharecropping family before earning Olympic gold at the 1936 Berlin games.

#22. Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974)

The Hollywood studio pioneer grew up in poverty in Warsaw before arriving in America, where his first job was sweeping factory floors.

#23. Frances Allen (1932-2020)

Allen grew up on a dairy farm that lacked electricity and taught high-school math before pioneering optimization techniques that underpin modern computer programming.

#24. George Foreman (1949-2025)

The heavyweight champion recalled childhood meals where he and his siblings would share a single hamburger.

#25. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877)

“Commodore” Vanderbilt quit school at age 11 to work on his father’s ferry, which gave him a taste for life on the water, leading him to build a steamship (then railroad) empire.

#26. Barney Ford (1822-1902)

After escaping slavery, Ford built–and lost–multiple fortunes in the Old West, along the way helping to ensure Black suffrage in Colorado.

#27. William Fox (1879-1952)

The founder of what became 20th Century Studios worked in a garment factory as a child.

#28. A.G. Gaston (1892-1996)

Born in a log cabin in Alabama during Jim Crow, Gaston was a coal miner before building the Booker T. Washington Insurance Company, a financial powerhouse that served the Black community.

#29. John H. Johnson (1918-2005)

The founder of Ebony and Jet magazine launched his company by borrowing against his mother’s furniture.

#30. William Lear (1902-1978)

The creator of the Learjet and inventor of the 8-track audio tape was raised by a single mother in a Chicago tenement.

#31. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

America’s first billionaire was the son of a con artist and bigamist who left his family in financial ruin.

#32. Richard DeVos (1926-2018)

During the Great Depression, the Amway cofounder’s family of five was forced to move into his grandparents’ attic.

#33. Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919)

Her cosmetics business made her one of the first Black women to become a millionaire, but she started as an orphaned domestic servant and laundress.

#34. John Marshall (1755-1835)

The self-educated Supreme Court justice was born in a log cabin in Virginia and endured winter at Valley Forge.

#35. Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)

Unable to afford college due to his father’s business failure, Ike earned a seat at West Point and became the general who won World War II and became president.

#36. James Brown (1933-2006)

The Godfather of Soul was raised in a brothel after his parents abandoned him.

#37. Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

The prolific inventor and serial entrepreneur had three months of formal schooling and, ironically for the man who created the phonograph, premature hearing loss. As a kid, he sold newspapers on Michigan trains to help his family make ends meet.

#38. Sheldon Adelson (1933-2021)

The casino mogul slept on the floor of a Boston tenement as a child, getting his entrepreneurial start as a paperboy at age 12.

#39. Kirk Kerkorian (1917-2015)

Before Kerkorian helped develop the Las Vegas Strip, he dropped out of school after eighth grade to become a boxer.

#40. Mary Kay Ash (1918-2001)

In her early years, the cosmetics mogul took care of her three siblings and invalid father while her mother worked long hours.

#41. Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987)

Luce was the illegitimate daughter of a struggling chorus girl; she later became an award-winning playwright, Congresswoman and ambassador.

#42. Jeremiah Hamilton (1806-1875)

After fleeing Haiti to escape counterfeiting charges, Hamilton came to New York and built a proto-hedge fund in the 1860s to become one of the first Black millionaires.

#43. Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

He’s the only 20th-century president without a college degree because his father’s business failure forced him to drop out, and he turned to politics after the failure of his own haberdashery business.

#44. Ray Charles (1930-2004)

The legendary musician grew up in poverty and lost his sight at a young age.

#45. Hank Aaron (1934-2021)

The home run king spent his formative years practicing with sticks and bottlecaps because his parents couldn’t afford a baseball.

#46. Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Angelou’s childhood was marked by the one-two punch of segregation and the Great Depression; she worked odd jobs like line cook and streetcar conductor before becoming a literary icon.

#47. Louis Armstrong (1901-1971)

Raised in a shack by his mother and grandmother, the jazz trumpeter scavenged for food and coal as a child before being sent to a reform school.

#48. Rose Cook Small (1912-1996)

As a child, Small sold produce on the streets of Camden, New Jersey. As an adult, she made Bluebird, Inc. one of the country’s leading meat-processing businesses.

#49. Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

The songwriting legend’s family emigrated from Russia to New York City to escape anti-Semitic pogroms, and he left home at age 13 after his father’s death.

#50. Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

Baseball’s most famous wordsmith (and star New York Yankees catcher) dropped out of school in eighth grade to help his family make ends meet.

#51. Marcus Goldman (1821-1904)

The founder of Goldman Sachs fled the European revolutions of 1848 and pioneered the American commercial paper market.

#52. James Garfield (1831-1881)

The Union general and 20th president did backbreaking farm labor and worked as a canal boy to support his family after his father’s death.

#53. Rafer Johnson (1934-2020)

The Olympic decathlete and actor spent part of his childhood living in a repurposed boxcar.

#54. Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Adopted into a working-class family, Jobs sold his van to get the capital he needed to start Apple in his parents’ garage in........

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