How Old Were the Founding Fathers in 1776? Don’t Let Art Deceive You

By Tim Gihring

June 5, 2026—George Washington didn’t go in for wigs. But he did powder his hair white. Most men did in his day, including the other major figures of the American Revolution.

It’s a seemingly innocuous bit of fashion history, yet it may be coloring our perception of the founders, as white hair now implies extreme old age—the winter of life. This summer, as the United States marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s worth noting that the revolutionaries were mostly spring chickens—the Gen Z of their day.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33. Alexander Hamilton was only 21. Betsy Ross, 24, was more like Etsy Ross. Benjamin Franklin, who may have had wigs older than his fellow freedom fighters, was the only genuinely wizened one, at 70.

Washington was 44, exactly the average age of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. The same age as Ryan Gosling today. Yet Washington, too, has prematurely aged in the popular imagination.

The Aging of Revolutionaries through Art

Art hasn’t helped. Artists invariably portrayed the revolutionaries in their later years, when the republic was firmly established and the founding fathers were a more, well, fatherly age.

Mia’s majestic portrait of Washington by Thomas Sully, for instance, shows him at the end of his career, far from the battlefield. It’s a copy of a painting by Gilbert Stuart, who painted the original in 1800, months after Washington’s death at 67.

Stuart had a booming business of portraying the founders after the Revolution—demand was high for portraits that could grace all the government buildings, schools, currency, etc. in a new and growing country. (The images of Washington and Jefferson on the $1 and $2 bills, respectively, are based on Stuart’s work.) Indeed, Stuart painted the first five presidents, setting the template for how we think of them: dignified, authoritative, old.

Perhaps the misperception was inevitable. We think of the founders as wise. And wisdom, we say, comes with age. We may have to adjust to the fact—as the musical Hamilton so adroitly revealed—that the founders were wiser but not older.

Revolutionary Art at Mia

You can see numerous examples of art portraying the country’s early days at Mia, including Hiram Powers’s c. 1853 bust of Washington (G323), a tea set made by Paul Revere in 1792 (G350), and a medallion depicting Benjamin Franklin in his famous fur cap (G322).