fatherlessness absent fathers

Alexander Hamilton - the author of the Federalist Papers, first treasurer of the United States, and the founder of America's economic system
.
John Hancock - president of the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and financial underwriter of the American Revolution
.
More than a quarter (27%) of U.S. presidents --
a majority of U.S. presidents in America's first 50 years:

U.S. President Gen. George Washington - America's first founding father, first president, and most beloved hero.
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson - America's third president, and primary author of the Declaration of Independence
U.S. President James Monroe - America's fifth president
U.S. President Andrew Jackson - America's seventh president
U.S. President Andrew Johnson - America's seventeenth president
U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes - America's nineteenth president
U.S. President James A. Garfield - America's twentieth president
U.S. President Grover Cleveland - America's twenty-second president
U.S. President Herbert Hoover - America's thirty-first president
U.S. President Gerald Ford - America's thirty-eighth president
U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton - America's forty-second president
U.S. President Barack Obama - America's forty-fourth president
U.S. vice presidents:
U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr - America's third vice president, founding father
U.S. Vice President Schuyler Colfax - America's twenty-first vice president
U.S. Vice President Charles Curtis - America's thirty-sixth vice president
Many of America's top jurists:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice James F. Byrnes
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo
U.S. Supreme Court Ch. Justice (and U.S. Treasury Secretary) Salmon P. Chase
U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis
U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Melville Fuller
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John McKinley
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Rutledge
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd
U.S. Supreme Court Ch. Justice Edward D. White
U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson

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More American leaders, heros, icons and achievers:
U.S. Gen. Omar Nelson Bradley
George Washington Carver
U.S. Gen. Wesley K. Clark
U.S. Senator Henry Clay
Stephen Colbert
Confederate President Jefferson Davis
Frederick Douglas
U.S. Gen. Alexander Haig
Nathaniel Hawthorne
U.S. (Confederate) Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
Fr. Gen. Marquis de Lafayette - supporter of the American Revolution
U.S. (Confederate) Gen. Robert E. Lee
Meriwether Lewis
U.S. (Confederate) Gen. James Longstreet (Lee's "Old War Horse")
George Mason - a founding father of America
U.S. Gen. George Gordon Meade (Gettysburg)
WWII hero Audie Murphy - the most decorated combat soldier of World War II
Linus Carl Pauling (Nobel Prize x 2)
Michael Phelps - the world's greatest Olympian (swimmer)
U.S. Lt. Gen. Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller - the most decorated Marine in U.S. History
Jackie Robinson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Benjamin Rush - a founding father of America, physician and diplomat
U.S. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Annie Mansfield Sullivan - the "miracle worker", Helen Keller's teacher
Mark Twain
Booker T. Washington