Is there a definitive number of Founding Fathers? Or is it a catch-all for those directly involved with the early shaping of the U.S.?

by GenGaara25

I am British and am trying to read up on the early days of the U.S., although I know several Founding Fathers I wanted to find a list of all of them.

I had assumed that the Fathers were a specific group of people, maybe those that actually signed the Declaration of Independence. But from reading their Wikipedia page and googling I am assuming this isn't the case.

Wikipedia said there are seven "key" founding fathers, but another website talked about eight "significant" ones, then I also saw suggestions for there being 10, 12, 13 and 18 Founding Fathers.

So my question is are the Fathers a very specific group of x people? Or is it a much more broad term than I have been led to believe?

Jay_CD

You have to distinguish between those who signed the Declaration of Independence and those who wrote/framed it. George Washington was one of the main Founding Fathers - but he never actually signed the DoI for example. John Hancock was probably the most famous signatory and was the first person to sign it but did little to actually frame it other than preside over the Continental Congress that adopted it. His name has though become a synoym for a signature as he signed the document with a flourish - in America the expression "put your John Hancock here" is still used as a request to sign something.

Personally I would interpret the expression "Founding Fathers" reasonably broadly, there are four great US state papers - the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Continental Convention and the Articles of Confederation. The characters involved in drafting these documents overlapped considerably but only one man signed all four - Roger Sherman and who has heard of him? In addition there were the Federalist Papers which provided the intellectual heft for a constitution., the Treaty of Paris that negotiated the peace Treaty with Britain and other writings and events such as the War of Independence.

Historians though have anticipated your question and tend to talk of the "Key Founding Fathers" - Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison as being the most influential fathers, while there are a number of others, like Roger Sherman and John Hancock who qualify only in the broadest interpretation.