The first U.S. president to be born an American citizen was Martin Van Buren. He was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York, after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, which made him the first president born as a United States citizen rather than as a British subject like all his predecessors
. Van Buren was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841, and was unique in that English was his second language, as he grew up in a Dutch-speaking community
