Founding Fathers Trivia
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96 free Founding Fathers trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
49 free Founding Fathers trivia questions with answers. The Founding Fathers are the most quoted and least understood people in American history. Everyone knows Washington crossed the Delaware and Franklin flew a kite; fewer know that Franklin's funeral drew 20,000 people, that Thomas Paine's drew six, or that the man who wrote 'We the People' did it on a wooden leg. This quiz runs 96 questions across the whole founding generation: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, plus the signers, framers and firebrands around them, from John Hancock and Patrick Henry to Roger Sherman, George Mason, Charles Carroll and Abigail Adams. It covers the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights, starting with warm-ups and building to questions that will test a history teacher. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a US history class, a Fourth of July party or a pub-quiz history round.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who commanded the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later became the first US president?
George Washington
George Washington led the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783 and then served two terms as the first president; he also presided over the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Q 02Historian Richard B. Morris famously singled out how many 'key' Founding Fathers?
Seven
Richard B. Morris picked seven key figures in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, judging them on leadership, longevity and statesmanship.
Q 03Which three Americans signed the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War?
Franklin, Adams and Jay
Franklin, Adams and Jay signed for the United States in Paris on September 3, 1783; Jay had hurried things along by telling the British he would deal with them directly, bypassing France and Spain.
Q 04Which two Founding Fathers died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration?
Adams and Jefferson
Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826; Adams's reported last words, 'Thomas Jefferson survives', were mistaken, as Jefferson had died several hours earlier in Virginia.
Q 05The 55 delegates who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention are commonly known by what term?
Framers
The Framers numbered 55 delegates in all, though only 39 of them signed the finished Constitution on September 17, 1787; three who stayed to the end refused to sign.
Q 06Which writer's anonymous 1776 pamphlet Common Sense made the plain-spoken case for American independence?
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine had been in America barely over a year: he arrived from England in late 1774 with a letter of introduction from Franklin and found work as a journalist.
Q 07Which 'Give me liberty or give me death!' orator refused a seat at the 1787 Constitutional Convention?
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry was chosen as a delegate but declined to go; asked why, he is said to have replied, 'I smelt a rat', and he then led Virginia's fight against ratification.
Q 08Which Connecticut delegate was the only person to sign the Continental Association, Declaration, Articles of Confederation and Constitution?
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman, who started out as a cobbler, signed all four; at the 1787 Convention he also drove the Connecticut Compromise that gave every state an equal voice in the Senate.
Q 09Which delegate wrote the Constitution's preamble and is nicknamed the "Penman of the Constitution"?
Gouverneur Morris
Gouverneur Morris polished the final text for the Committee of Style and is credited with turning 'We, the People of the States' into 'We, the People of the United States'.
Q 10Who alone signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin signed all three and also the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, making him the only man whose name is on all four of those founding documents.
Q 11Under what pen name did Franklin write his famous almanack from 1732?
Richard Saunders
Richard Saunders, the 'Poor Richard' of the title, opened the first almanack by predicting the death of rival almanac-maker Titan Leeds, then insisted Leeds really had died when he objected.
Q 12Which type of eyeglasses is Franklin generally credited with inventing?
Bifocals
Bifocals let Franklin see near and far through one frame; by one account he had his lenses cut in half so that he could watch French speakers' lips at court.
Q 13Which musical instrument did Franklin invent in 1761?
The glass harmonica
The glass harmonica is played by touching wet fingers to glass bowls spinning on a rod; Franklin, then living in London, devised it after hearing a performance on water-tuned glasses.
Q 21What was James Madison's proposal that became the basis of the Constitutional Convention's debates?
The Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan, drafted by Madison and presented by Governor Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, proposed a bicameral legislature apportioned by population; the New Jersey Plan answered it for the small states.
Q 22Where did James Madison study under John Witherspoon?
Princeton in New Jersey
Princeton in New Jersey, then the College of New Jersey, was an unusual choice: most young Virginians of his class went to William & Mary, but Madison went north and stayed on after graduating in 1771.
Q 23Who formally introduced James Madison to his future wife Dolley Payne Todd in 1794?
Q 14Where was Alexander Hamilton born?
Charlestown, Nevis
Charlestown, Nevis, in the British West Indies, was Hamilton's birthplace; born out of wedlock and orphaned young, he was sent as a teenager to the mainland colonies, where he studied at King's College, now Columbia.
Q 15Which newspaper did Hamilton found in 1801?
New York Post
The New York Post began as the New-York Evening Post, which Hamilton launched with fellow Federalists dismayed by Jefferson's election as president.
Q 16Where did Hamilton fight the 1804 pistol duel that cost him his life?
Weehawken, New Jersey
Weehawken, New Jersey, was a popular duelling ground below the Palisades cliffs; both men were rowed across the Hudson from Manhattan at dawn, and Hamilton died of his wound the next day.
Q 17Which financial institution did Alexander Hamilton found in 1784, before he became Treasury Secretary?
Bank of New York
Bank of New York opened in 1784 with Hamilton among its founders; five years later, as Treasury Secretary, he arranged for it to make the new federal government its first loan.
Q 18Under what shared pen name did the authors of The Federalist Papers write?
Publius
Publius was the shared pen name of Hamilton, Madison and Jay, who wrote the 85 essays for New York newspapers to persuade the state to ratify the Constitution.
Q 19Which Federalist Paper by Madison argues a large republic is the best guard against 'majority faction'?
No. 10
No. 10, published in November 1787, argues that a large, extended republic dilutes factions by multiplying competing interests, so no single majority faction can easily combine to oppress the rest.
Q 20Which Founding Father was the first chief justice of the United States and later governor of New York?
John Jay
John Jay left the court in 1795 to become governor of New York, and when he was offered the chief justiceship again in 1800 he turned it down, so the seat went to John Marshall.
Aaron Burr
Aaron Burr, who had lodged at her mother's Philadelphia boarding house, made the introduction in May 1794; marrying the non-Quaker Madison that September got Dolley expelled from the Society of Friends.
Q 24Which unpopular clients did lawyer John Adams successfully defend before the Revolution?
British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre
British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre of 1770 got a fair trial thanks to Adams: Captain Preston and six of his men were acquitted, and two convicted of manslaughter escaped with branded thumbs.
Q 25Adams was the primary author of which 1780 document that influenced the later federal charter?
The Massachusetts Constitution
The Massachusetts Constitution replaced a draft that voters had thrown out in 1778; the new convention's drafting committee left the job to Adams alone, a 'sub-sub committee of one', as he put it.
Q 26Which office did John Adams call 'the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived' while he held it?
Vice President
Vice President Adams wrote that to Abigail in December 1793; senators had dubbed him 'His Rotundity' when he pressed in 1789 for grander titles for the president.
Q 27In a March 1776 letter, Abigail Adams urged her husband and Congress to do what as they drafted new laws?
Remember the ladies
'Remember the ladies' was her plea in a letter of March 31, 1776, warning that women would 'foment a rebellion' if they had no voice in the new code of laws.
Q 28Where was Thomas Jefferson born in 1743?
Shadwell Plantation
Shadwell Plantation, his father Peter Jefferson's farm in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia, was Jefferson's birthplace on April 13, 1743; Monticello, which he began in 1768, stands a few miles away.
Q 29What did Jefferson sell to Congress for $23,950 in 1815, after British troops burned the Capitol?
His book collection
His book collection of 6,487 volumes restarted the Library of Congress, more than doubling what the fire had destroyed; declaring 'I cannot live without books', he promptly began buying more.
Q 30Which instrument did Thomas Jefferson play, often accompanying his wife Martha at the piano?
Violin
Violin practice paid off: the young Jefferson reportedly played well enough to join weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, and at home he accompanied Martha, a skilled keyboard player.