Portrait of Daniel Chester French

Birthday profile

Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French, American sculptor, designed the Lincoln statue (died 1931)

Born
April 20, 1850
Died
October 7, 1931
Zodiac sign
Taurus
Birth year
1850

About Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His works include The Minute Man, an 1874 statue in Concord, Massachusetts, and his 1920 monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He was a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and was awarded a medal of honor from the Paris Exposition of 1900; he also was granted honorary degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia universities. French also became a member of the National Academy of Design (1901), the American Academy of Arts and Letters (which awarded him the Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1917), the Architectural League, and the Accademia di San Luca, of Rome. French's daughter, Margaret, also occasionally modeled for him, including for some of his rare portrait paintings, and became famous in her own right as a sculptor under the name Margaret French Cresson.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Daniel Chester French timeline

  1. He was a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and was awarded a medal of honor from the Paris Exposition of 1900; he also was granted honorary degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia universities.
  2. French also became a member of the National Academy of Design (1901), the American Academy of Arts and Letters (which awarded him the Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1917), the Architectural League, and the Accademia di San Luca, of Rome.

The world when Daniel Chester French was born

Daniel Chester French was born in 1850. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1850

  • Best-selling bookThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineCompromise of 1850 on slavery
  • Technology milestoneFirst submarine telegraph cable (English Channel)
  • World population~1.3B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderZachary Taylor / Millard Fillmore
  • U.S. population23.2M

1850 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Daniel Chester French's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18502026
Population23.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.