Presidents of the United States, in order

47 items · Ages 8+ · In order

47 presidencies, 45 people. Grover Cleveland served two terms that were not back to back, so he is the 22nd and the 24th president, and Donald Trump is the 45th and the 47th. This is the standard count: each presidency gets its own number, so a person who returns after a break gets a new one.

Knowing the presidents in order gives American history a backbone. Each name becomes a hook to hang events on: wars, inventions, new states. It is a classic memory-work list, and it is long enough to show why chunking and spaced review matter.

How to learn it

Chunk first. Forty-seven names is far more than the four or so things the mind holds at once, so the list is split by era into groups of four to six. Learn one group, recall it with the book closed, then add the next. Old groups come back on day 1, 3, 7 and 21. For a stronger hook, walk a memory palace: Washington washing the front door, Adams with an apple in his throat on the mat, and so on, one picture per stop.

Encode make it vivid → Space bring it back on day 1, 3, 7, 21 → Retrieve pull it from your head. From the infographic Remember It on Purpose.

Presidents of the United States, in order

No.PresidentYears in office
1George Washington1789–1797
2John Adams1797–1801
3Thomas Jefferson1801–1809
4James Madison1809–1817
5James Monroe1817–1825
6John Quincy Adams1825–1829
7Andrew Jackson1829–1837
8Martin Van Buren1837–1841
9William Henry Harrison1841
10John Tyler1841–1845
11James K. Polk1845–1849
12Zachary Taylor1849–1850
13Millard Fillmore1850–1853
14Franklin Pierce1853–1857
15James Buchanan1857–1861
16Abraham Lincoln1861–1865
17Andrew Johnson1865–1869
18Ulysses S. Grant1869–1877
19Rutherford B. Hayes1877–1881
20James A. Garfield1881
21Chester A. Arthur1881–1885
22Grover Cleveland1885–1889
23Benjamin Harrison1889–1893
24Grover Cleveland1893–1897
25William McKinley1897–1901
26Theodore Roosevelt1901–1909
27William Howard Taft1909–1913
28Woodrow Wilson1913–1921
29Warren G. Harding1921–1923
30Calvin Coolidge1923–1929
31Herbert Hoover1929–1933
32Franklin D. Roosevelt1933–1945
33Harry S. Truman1945–1953
34Dwight D. Eisenhower1953–1961
35John F. Kennedy1961–1963
36Lyndon B. Johnson1963–1969
37Richard Nixon1969–1974
38Gerald Ford1974–1977
39Jimmy Carter1977–1981
40Ronald Reagan1981–1989
41George H. W. Bush1989–1993
42Bill Clinton1993–2001
43George W. Bush2001–2009
44Barack Obama2009–2017
45Donald Trump2017–2021
46Joe Biden2021–2025
47Donald Trump2025–

Chunk first. Forty-seven names is far more than the four or so things the mind holds at once, so the list is split by era into groups of four to six. Learn one group, recall it with the book closed, then add the next. Old groups come back on day 1, 3, 7 and 21. For a stronger hook, walk a memory palace: Washington washing the front door, Adams with an apple in his throat on the mat, and so on, one picture per stop. · teddyrookbook.com/memory/challenges/us-presidents/

Sources

Checked October 31, 2026. Progress is kept on this device only (per learner). More lists: all memory challenges · memory games.

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