Might be easier for some to declare who'd they'd vote "off the island" so to speak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_of_Fame_for_Great_AmericansClassification of honorees
The first 50 names were required to include representatives of a majority of 15 classes:
authors and editors
business men
inventors
missionaries and explorers
philanthropists and reformers
clergymen and theologians;
scientists
engineers and architects
lawyers and judges
musicians, painters, and sculptors
physicians and surgeons
rulers and statesmen
soldiers and sailors
teachers
distinguished men and women outside of these classes
George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Daniel Webster
Benjamin Franklin
Ulysses S. Grant
John Marshall
Thomas Jefferson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Fulton
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Washington Irving
Jonathan Edwards
Samuel F. B. Morse
David G. Farragut
Henry Clay
George Peabody
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Peter Cooper
Eli Whitney
Robert E. Lee
Horace Mann
John James Audubon
James Kent
Henry Ward Beecher
Joseph Story
John Adams
William Ellery Channing
Gilbert Stuart
Asa Gray
Later groups
Added in 1905:
John Quincy Adams
James Russell Lowell
Mary Lyon
William T. Sherman
James Madison
John Greenleaf Whittier
Emma Willard
Maria Mitchell
Added in 1910:
Beecher Stowe
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Edgar Allan Poe
James Fenimore Cooper
Phillips Brooks
William Cullen Bryant
Frances E. Willard
Andrew Jackson
George Bancroft
John Lothrop Motley
Added in 1915:
Alexander Hamilton
Mark Hopkins
Francis Parkman
Louis Agassiz
Elias Howe
Joseph Henry
Charlotte Cushman
Rufus Choate
Daniel Boone
Added in 1920:
William Thomas Morton
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Roger Williams
Patrick Henry
Alice Freeman Palmer
James Buchanan Eads
Added in 1925:
Edwin Booth
John Paul Jones
Added in 1930:
James McNeill Whistler
James Monroe
Matthew F. Maury
Walt Whitman
Added in 1935:
William Penn
Simon Newcomb
Grover Cleveland
Added in 1940:
Stephen Foster
Added in 1945:
Booker T. Washington
Thomas Paine
Walter Reed
Sidney Lanier
Added in 1950:
William C. Gorgas
Woodrow Wilson
Susan B. Anthony
Alexander Graham Bell
Theodore Roosevelt
Josiah W. Gibbs
Added in 1955:
Wilbur Wright *
Thomas J. Jackson
George Westinghouse
Added in 1960:
Thomas Alva Edison
Henry David Thoreau
Edward A. MacDowell
Added in 1965:
Jane Addams
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Sylvanus Thayer
Orville Wright *
Added in 1970:
Albert A. Michelson
Lillian Wald
Added in 1973:
George Washington Carver
Louis D. Brandeis
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John Philip Sousa
Added in 1976:
Clara Barton
Luther Burbank
Andrew Carnegie
The inductees voted on in 1976 (and Brandeis) do not have busts at the Hall.
Nominees not elected
In addition to Constance Woolson and Jefferson Davis, the following people were nominated at least once but not elected:
John C. Calhoun, Horace Greeley, Ephraim McDowell, Richard M. Hoe, Adoniram Judson, Henry Wheaton, Hiram Powers, Louisa May Alcott, Dorothea Dix, Alice Cary, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, Martha Washington, Francis Wayland, Frederick Edwin Church, Sarah Franklin Bache, Horace Bushnell, Mary Washington, Matthew Simpson, William Austin Burt, Ottmar Mergenthaler, John Eliot (missionary), Helen Hunt Jackson, Robert L. Stevens, John Jay, Samuel Adams, Sacagawea, Benjamin Thompson, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Cyrus McCormick, Henry George, George Rogers Clark, Charles Follen McKim, Henry Barnard, Borden Parker Bowne, Edward Austin Sheldon, Peter Bulkeley, Lucretia Mott, Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John Singleton Copley, Andrew Johnson, William Henry Harrison, Chester Alan Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, S. Weir Mitchell, William Brewster (Pilgrim), William James, Warren G. Harding, William Beaumont, Elizabeth Blackwell, Benjamin Peirce, Robert McCormick, James K. Patterson, Elizabeth Seton, Calvin Coolidge, Paul Dunbar, John Ireland (archbishop), Judah Touro, William Henry Welch, Joyce Kilmer, George Caleb Bingham, Paul M. Warburg, John Stevens (inventor), Karl Landsteiner, Jacob Schiff, Nikola Tesla, Noah Webster, Henry Ford, Charles Evans Hughes, Fiorello La Guardia, Babe Ruth, John Shaw Billings, Gilbert N. Lewis, Crawford Long, George M. Cohan, Al Jolson, Lou Gehrig, Johnny Appleseed, Amelia Earhart, Chief Joseph, Wyatt Earp, Huey Long, Will Rogers.
