25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From the Finger Lakes, New York

Pier on Seneca Lake at Watkins Glen in New York’s Finger Lakes region. Photo: Meagan Marchant / Shutterstock

Stretching across a 14-county section of central and western New York, the Finger Lakes region is globally celebrated for its glacial lakes, gorges, rolling vineyards, and historic canal towns. The region includes places such as Auburn, Ithaca, Canandaigua, Geneva, Corning, Hammondsport, Cortland, Owego, and Skaneateles, communities that have played an outsized role in New York and American history.

Every person on this list has a documented connection to the Finger Lakes region through birth, childhood, education, or long-standing local roots. Spanning Hollywood stars, rock and folk musicians, aviation and industrial pioneers, writers, artists, athletes, inventors, and reformers, here are 25 famous people who trace important parts of their lives directly to the Finger Lakes, New York.

1. Kristen Wiig – Canandaigua (Ontario County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Canandaigua in 1973, Kristen Wiig spent her early childhood in New York before her family later moved to Pennsylvania and then Rochester.
• Claim to Fame: Acclaimed comedic actress, writer, and producer. Wiig was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012 and has received numerous Emmy nominations for her television work. She co-wrote and starred in Bridesmaids (2011), earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

2. Glenn Curtiss – Hammondsport (Steuben County / Keuka Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Hammondsport in 1878, Glenn Curtiss grew up in the village and opened a bicycle shop before becoming nationally known for motorcycles and aviation. Hammondsport and the surrounding Keuka Lake area became central to his early aircraft experiments.
• Claim to Fame: Curtiss became one of America’s most important early aviation pioneers and a major figure in the development of naval aviation. On July 4, 1908, he flew the June Bug 5,090 feet near Hammondsport in the first officially recognized, pre-announced, publicly observed airplane flight in the United States. The company he built later became part of Curtiss-Wright after a 1929 merger with Wright Aeronautical.

3. John Walsh – Auburn (Cayuga County / Owasco Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Auburn in 1945, John Walsh grew up in the city before attending the University at Buffalo.
• Claim to Fame: Television host and victims’ rights advocate best known for America’s Most Wanted. Walsh and his wife, Revé, were among the founders of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 1984. According to NCMEC, Walsh’s television work has helped law enforcement capture more than 1,500 fugitives and recover more than 50 missing children.

4. Bill Pullman – Hornell (Steuben County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Hornell in 1953, Bill Pullman graduated from Hornell High School in 1971, attended SUNY Delhi, and earned his bachelor’s degree from SUNY Oneonta.
• Claim to Fame: Acclaimed stage and screen actor. Pullman starred as President Thomas J. Whitmore in Independence Day (1996) and Lone Starr in Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs (1987), and appeared in films including Sleepless in Seattle and While You Were Sleeping. He later starred in the television drama The Sinner.

5. Duane Eddy – Corning (Steuben County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Corning in 1938, Duane Eddy spent his early childhood in New York before his family eventually moved west.
• Claim to Fame: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist known for the deep, echoing “twang” that became his signature sound. Eddy recorded influential instrumental hits including “Rebel Rouser,” “Forty Miles of Bad Road,” and “Because They’re Young,” helping shape the sound of early rock guitar.

6. Arthur Dove – Canandaigua / Geneva (Ontario County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Canandaigua in 1880, Arthur Dove was raised in nearby Geneva, where his father was a building contractor and brick manufacturer. Dove attended Hobart College before transferring to Cornell University in Ithaca.
• Claim to Fame: Dove became one of the pioneers of American modern art and is frequently credited among the earliest American artists to create purely abstract work. His nature-inspired paintings helped establish abstraction in American art, and his work is held by institutions including the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

7. Travie McCoy – Geneva (Ontario County / Seneca Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born and raised in Geneva, Travie McCoy developed his musical interests while growing up in the Finger Lakes and later co-founded Gym Class Heroes.
• Claim to Fame: Rapper, singer, songwriter, and frontman of Gym Class Heroes. The group scored a major hit with “Cupid’s Chokehold,” while McCoy’s solo career produced the multi-platinum single “Billionaire” featuring Bruno Mars.

8. David Foster Wallace – Ithaca (Tompkins County / Cayuga Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca in 1962 while his father was completing graduate work at Cornell University. His family later moved to Illinois.
• Claim to Fame: Wallace became one of the most influential American novelists and essayists of his generation. His books included The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest, and he received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997.

9. Alex Haley – Ithaca (Tompkins County / Cayuga Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Alex Haley was born in Ithaca in 1921 at 212 Cascadilla Street while his father, Simon Haley, was studying agriculture at Cornell University. The family later returned to Tennessee.
• Claim to Fame: Haley co-authored The Autobiography of Malcolm X and later wrote Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which became one of the most widely known works of historical family narrative in the United States and inspired the landmark television miniseries.

10. Margaret Sanger – Corning (Steuben County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born Margaret Louise Higgins in Corning in 1879, Margaret Sanger grew up in the city before entering nursing training.
• Claim to Fame: Sanger became a leading advocate for birth control in the United States. She opened the country’s first dedicated birth-control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 and later helped organize the American Birth Control League, an organization that became part of the movement that eventually produced Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

11. Theodore W. Case – Auburn (Cayuga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Auburn in 1888, Theodore W. Case returned to the city after studying at Yale and established the Case Research Laboratory behind his family home on Genesee Street.
• Claim to Fame: Case was an inventor and scientist whose work with Earl Sponable produced the first commercially successful sound-on-film system. Their Auburn research became the basis for Fox-Case Movietone and helped transform motion pictures during the transition from silent films to talking pictures.

12. Willie Watson – Watkins Glen (Schuyler County / Seneca Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Willie Watson grew up in Watkins Glen at the southern end of Seneca Lake, where he developed an early interest in traditional American music, guitar, and banjo.
• Claim to Fame: Acclaimed Americana singer, multi-instrumentalist, and one of the founding members of Old Crow Medicine Show. Watson performed on the group’s recording of “Wagon Wheel” before launching a successful solo career and later appearing in the Coen brothers’ film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

13. John Willys – Canandaigua (Ontario County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Canandaigua in 1873, John North Willys began in the bicycle business in his hometown before moving into the rapidly expanding automobile industry.
• Claim to Fame: Willys became one of the most important early American automobile manufacturers. He took control of the Overland automobile company in 1908, and the business became the Willys-Overland Company in 1912. By the mid-1910s, it had grown into the second-largest American automaker behind Ford. The company that bore his name later became one of the principal producers of the military Jeep during World War II.

14. Eric Adams (Louis Marullo) – Auburn (Cayuga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born Louis Marullo in Auburn in 1952, Eric Adams grew up in the city and began performing in local bands before joining forces with longtime friend Joey DeMaio.
• Claim to Fame: Adams became the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Manowar, which formed in 1980. Known for his powerful high-register singing, he has remained one of the band’s defining members throughout its international career.

15. Carl Carmer – Cortland (Cortland County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Cortland in 1893, Carl Carmer grew up in upstate New York and later attended Hamilton College before continuing his education elsewhere.
• Claim to Fame: Carmer became a prominent author, editor, historian, and folklorist. His best-known books included Stars Fell on Alabama and Listen for a Lonesome Drum, the latter a rich chronicle of the folklore, legends, communities, and cultural history of New York State.

16. John Mix Stanley – Canandaigua (Ontario County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Canandaigua in 1814, John Mix Stanley was orphaned as a teenager and apprenticed to a local coachmaker before beginning his career as a painter.
• Claim to Fame: Stanley became a major 19th-century painter of western landscapes and Native American subjects. He traveled widely across the American West, producing portraits, scenes, and expedition imagery. Much of his original Indian Gallery was destroyed in the 1865 Smithsonian fire, although surviving works remain in major museum collections.

17. Kyle Dake – Lansing / Ithaca (Tompkins County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Kyle Dake is a Tompkins County native who grew up in Lansing, just north of Ithaca. He attended Lansing High School before starring at Cornell University in Ithaca.
• Claim to Fame: Dake became the first NCAA wrestler to win four Division I national championships in four different weight classes. He later won four world championships in freestyle wrestling and earned Olympic bronze medals at both the Tokyo 2020 Games and the Paris 2024 Games.

18. Kelly Connell – Seneca Falls (Seneca County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Seneca Falls in 1956, Kelly Connell grew up in the Finger Lakes before pursuing a professional acting career.
• Claim to Fame: Veteran film, television, and stage character actor. Connell is especially remembered for his regular role as medical examiner Dr. Carter Pike on the CBS drama Picket Fences, with additional screen appearances in Hot Shots!, Thirteen Days, Spider-Man 2, Cocktail, and Ghostbusters II.

19. Bob Mosher – Auburn (Cayuga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Auburn in 1915, Robert L. Mosher grew up in Cayuga County before building a career in radio and television writing.
• Claim to Fame: Mosher formed a long-running writing and producing partnership with Joe Connelly. Together they created Leave It to Beaver and later worked as writer-producers on The Munsters, helping shape two enduring American television comedies.

20. Robert Fitzgerald – Geneva (Ontario County / Seneca Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Geneva in 1910, Robert Fitzgerald spent his earliest years in the Finger Lakes before growing up in Illinois.
• Claim to Fame: Fitzgerald became a renowned poet, critic, educator, and classical translator. His English verse translations of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad became modern classics, and his translation of The Odyssey earned the Bollingen Award in 1961.

21. William H. Seward Jr. – Auburn (Cayuga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Auburn in 1839, William H. Seward Jr. was the youngest son of Secretary of State William H. Seward. He entered banking in Auburn before leaving for military service during the Civil War and later returned to the city.
• Claim to Fame: Seward became a Union Army brigadier general. He helped organize the 138th New York Infantry, which was redesignated the 9th New York Heavy Artillery, fought at Cold Harbor and Monocacy, and was wounded in battle. After the war, he returned to banking and civic life in Auburn.

22. Charles E. Cheney – Canandaigua (Ontario County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Canandaigua in 1836, Charles Edward Cheney graduated from Hobart College in Geneva in 1857 before entering the ministry.
• Claim to Fame: Cheney became one of the founding leaders of the Reformed Episcopal Church when it was organized in 1873 and later served as one of the denomination’s bishops and presiding bishops. He also spent more than fifty years as rector of Christ Church in Chicago.

23. Thomas Le Clear – Owego (Tioga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Owego in 1818, Thomas Le Clear showed artistic talent as a boy and began earning money from painting while still young before building a professional career in portraiture.
• Claim to Fame: Le Clear became a prominent 19th-century American portrait painter and was elected a National Academician in 1863. Among his best-known works are portraits of Ulysses S. Grant, including versions now held by the National Portrait Gallery and the White House.

24. Irwin Shepard – Skaneateles (Onondaga County / Skaneateles Lake)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born in Skaneateles in 1843, Irwin Shepard lived in the village until his family moved to Michigan when he was thirteen.
• Claim to Fame: Shepard served in the Union Army during the Civil War and received the Medal of Honor for his actions near Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1863. After the war, he became an educator, served as president of the Winona Normal School, and later became the first permanent secretary of the National Education Association.

25. Bob Socci – Auburn (Cayuga County)

• Finger Lakes Roots: Born and raised in Auburn, Bob Socci graduated from Auburn High School in 1985 before attending the University of Dayton.
• Claim to Fame: Socci became a veteran sports broadcaster and was named the radio play-by-play voice of the New England Patriots in 2013. During his tenure, he called four Super Bowl appearances, including three Patriots championships.

Quick Reference: 25 Famous Figures From the Finger Lakes, New York

Readers interested in more notable New Yorkers and Finger Lakes connections can continue with our 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Were From Upstate New York, 25 Famous People You Didn’t Know Went to College in Upstate New York, 20 Inventions and Innovations From Upstate New York That Changed the World, and 20 Foods That Were Invented in Upstate New York.