Founders Online is a public archive housing nearly 200,000 documents penned by seven American founders, a few of whom the average American has actually heard of. It’s a historical goldmine, and given the sheer volume of text, it seemed like a target ripe for over-analysis and unnecessary visualization.

A Few Caveats

First, the dataset is restricted to letters involving seven specific men: John Jay, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Consequently, the archive is heavily skewed. Attempting to compare their productivity to contemporaries like James Otis or say, Henry Knox, using only this corpus would be intellectually dishonest; many founders wrote voluminously yet simply are not in the dataset here.

There are also some glaring omissions. While John and Abigail Adams were remarkably prolific in their correspondence, George and Martha Washington’s paper trail is essentially non-existent. They wrote to each other constantly, but Martha famously burned their letters shortly before her death—a scorched-earth approach to privacy that was, unfortunately or not, common at the time.

Expect the occasional data hallucination. For instance, this boyhood journal of John Adams is indexed as having been written on the day of his birth. While Adams was famously incapable of keeping his mouth shut, I find it highly improbable that he emerged from the womb clutching a quill. I haven’t bothered to scrub these errors or filter the noise. Meh.

Disclaimer

Nothing about this project is professional, official, or particularly rigorous. It should not be used to draw serious conclusions about history, the current political environment, the human condition, or anything else. I’m mostly winging it because it’s fun. It is likely not accessible, mobile-friendly, user-friendly, or ly of any kind.

• Founders Network
• Founders Timeline

State

The project is stable and up to date—at least until the founders decide to release a surprise Christmas album.