Aaron Burr
Born in 1756 in Newark, New Jersey, Aaron Burr became Vice-President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson (1801-1805). Unfortunately, he is better known for having killed Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel in 1804.
James Fenimore Cooper
Born in Burlington, New Jersey, James Fenimore Cooper was the first major American novelist. His best-known tales of frontier adventure include The Last of the Mohicans (1826), an adventure story set in the Lake Champlain area.
Donald Fletcher Holmes
Donald Fletcher Holmes was born in Woodbury, New Jersey. He invented the process for making polyurethane. Various forms of polyurethane are used in to manufacture upholstery material, heat-insulating material in homes, offices, and refrigerators, life-saving artificial hearts, safety padding in modern automobiles, and carpeting.
Zebulon M. Pike
The famous explorer Zebulon M. Pike was born in Trenton, New Jersey. He was an army officer who led many expeditions to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi and negotiate peace treaties with Native American tribes. He is best remembered for discovering the mountain in Colorado that bears his name: Pike's Peak.
William Henry Vanderbilt
Financier William Henry Vanderbilt was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He controlled one of America's greatest family fortunes and headed one of the nation's largest corporations - the New York Central Railroad. Vanderbilt managed to double his family's fortune to the present-day equivalent of $3 billion, making him the richest man in the world at the time of his death in 1885.