On January 4, 1809, Louis Braille is born in Coupvray, France. He would go on to develop the writing system for visually impaired readers that bears his name: braille.

On January 19, 1809, poet, author and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe is born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Future U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is born in Hodgenville, Kentucky on February 12, 1809.

On April 19, 1809, former President Thomas Jefferson writes up a contract for the sale of an indentured servant named John Freeman to newly sworn-in President James Madison.

On October 11, 1809, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances in the early hours of the morning after stopping for the night at Grinder’s Tavern along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee.