The U.S. Constitution requires that the President be born in the United States. The 42 Presidents were born in 20 of the 50 states (or in colonies that later became states). This lesson uses maps to process and report information from a spatial perspective. Students will identify the states that have presidential birth sites and will differentiate the states with more presidential birth sites on a map. Inherent in this lesson is the ability to recognize all 50 of the United States on a map.

Geography, social studies, current events, history

Standard 1: "How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective"

One to three hours

• Wall map of the United States
• Blank Xpeditions outline maps of the United States, one per student or group
• List of U.S. Presidents and their states of birth (below)
• Colored pencils

Students will

• create a map, including a key for the map's symbols, to display presidential birthplace data; and
• draw inferences from, and answer questions about, the geographical information displayed in the map.

Explain that all 42 U.S. Presidents were born in one of the 50 United States (or a colony that has since become a state). The U.S. Constitution requires that the President be born in the U.S.

U.S. Presidents and Their States of Birth

1. George Washington (1789-97) Virginia
2. John Adams (1797-1801) Massachusetts
3. Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) Virginia
4. James Madison (1809-17) Virginia
5. James Monroe (1817-25) Virginia
6. John Quincy Adams (1825-29) Massachusetts
7. Andrew Jackson (1829-37) South Carolina
8. Martin Van Buren (1837-41) New York
9. William Henry Harrison (1841) Virginia
10. John Tyler (1841-45) Virginia
11. James K. Polk (1845-49) North Carolina
12. Zachary Taylor (1849-50) Virginia
13. Millard Fillmore (1850-53) New York
14. Franklin Pierce (1853-57) New Hampshire
15. James Buchanan (1857-61) Pennsylvania
16. Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) Kentucky
17. Andrew Johnson (1865-69) North Carolina
18. Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77) Ohio
19. Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81) Ohio
20. James A. Garfield (1881) Ohio
21. Chester A. Arthur (1881-85) Vermont
22. Grover Cleveland (1885-89) New Jersey
23. Benjamin Harrison (1889-93) Ohio
24. Grover Cleveland (1893-97) New Jersey
25. William McKinley (1897-1901) Ohio
26. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) New York
27. William H. Taft (1909-13) Ohio
28. Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) Virginia
29. Warren G. Harding (1921-23) Ohio
30. Calvin Coolidge (1923-29) Vermont
31. Herbert Hoover (1929-33) Iowa
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) New York
33. Harry S. Truman (1945-53) Missouri
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61) Texas
35. John F. Kennedy (1961-63) Massachusetts
36. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69) Texas
37. Richard M. Nixon (1969-74) California
38. Gerald R. Ford (1974-77) Nebraska
39. Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Georgia
40. Ronald Reagan (1981-89) Illinois
41. George Bush (1989-93) Massachusetts
42. William J. Clinton (1993-2001) Arkansas
43. George W. Bush (2001-) Connecticut

Provide students (individually or in groups) with a list of the Presidents and their birth states. Locate these states on a large wall map of the United States. How many states have been the birthplace of a President? Have any Presidents been born in your state? Tally the number born in each state.

Provide students with a blank outline map of the United States. Using colored pencils, guide students in transferring their chart information onto a choropleth map of presidential birthplaces. (In a choropleth map, the highest number is the darkest shade of one color, and the lowest number, or zero, is white.) They might use ranges 0 = white, 1 = pale yellow, 2-3 = light orange, 4-5 = medium orange, more than 5 = dark maroon.

Create a key (legend) that explains the color representation of the map and any symbols used.

Be sure that maps are labeled appropriately, using date, orientation, grid, scale, title, author, index, legend, and sources. (DOGSTAILS is an easy acronym!)

Discuss the maps that were created by the students. Are any patterns noticeable? Students should see that more Presidents were born in the eastern states, especially those states which were settled earliest.

Does the era of a presidency bear any relation to a President's birth state? Are earlier presidential birth states clustered east of the Mississippi? The first President born west of the Mississippi was Herbert Hoover, who took office in 1929. Point out that, as the population of the U.S. moved westward and spread out across the continent, so did the pattern of presidential births.

Draw the students' attention to what they have done in this activity. They have acquired information, processed it, and reported it to answer the geographic question, "Where were most U.S. Presidents born?"

Successful accomplishment of this lesson will be demonstrated by students' producing an accurate chart of presidential birth states and then applying that data to a map. For their map to be considered well made, students will include essential map features (date, orientation, grid, scale, title, author, index, legend, and sources) and a gradation of colors based on the data range as defined in a key. Students should be able to understand and point out the pattern of data shown on their completed map: that the eastern United States has given birth to a significant number of Presidents and that Virginia, with eight, claims more presidential births than any other state. This pattern should help students recognize that the westward spread over time of American settlements played a part in determining presidential birthplaces. To further test knowledge and understanding, have students use a different set of data to complete a similar project.

• Try mapping states where Presidents were living when elected, then compare the result to the map of states where they were born.
  
  
• Identify the living Presidents and locate where they live now.
  
  
• Find out which presidential birthplaces have museums and plan a visit to one if feasible.
  
  
• Visit the White House Web site and take a virtual tour of the President's home in Washington, D.C. Then let your students deck out the Oval Office at National Geographic's Inside the White House.

National Geographic: MapMachine
Netstate
The White House