Who is the greatest self-made American?

No inheritance, no connections, no head start worth mentioning. Every one of them built it.

1. 1
   Benjamin Franklin

   Tenth son of a candlemaker, apprenticed at twelve, and the man who wrote the template for the American success story.
2. 2
   Abraham Lincoln

   Born in a Kentucky log cabin with about a year of formal schooling in total.
3. 3
   Oprah Winfrey

   Raised in rural Mississippi poverty and built a media company from a talk show.
4. 4
   Andrew Carnegie

   Arrived from Scotland at thirteen, worked in a cotton mill, then built the steel industry.
5. 5
   Madam C.J. Walker

   Daughter of enslaved parents who built a hair-care business and became a self-made millionaire.
6. 6
   John D. Rockefeller

   Bookkeeper's clerk at sixteen who assembled Standard Oil out of a single refinery.
7. 7
   Frederick Douglass

   Taught himself to read while enslaved and became the country's foremost orator.
8. 8
   Henry Ford

   Farm boy and machine-shop apprentice who put the country on wheels.
9. 9
   Walt Disney

   Went bankrupt in Kansas City before building the studio and the parks.
10. 10
    Steve Jobs

    Adopted son of a machinist who dropped out of college and co-founded Apple in a garage.
11. 11
    Booker T. Washington

    Born into slavery, walked hundreds of miles to school, and founded Tuskegee.
12. 12
    Sam Walton

    Ran one variety store in Arkansas before turning it into the largest retailer on earth.
13. 13
    Dolly Parton

    One of twelve children in a one-room Tennessee cabin, now a songwriting institution.
14. 14
    Thomas Edison

    Newspaper boy on the railroad with three months of school who ended up with over a thousand patents.

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