The Great Span: President John Tyler’s Grandson Dies Aged 96
Born in 1790 just a few months after George Washington took office, John Tyler was America’s 10th president, serving from 1841-1845. Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Tyler’s last living grandson, died this past weekend at the age of 96.
As long as he lived, much of the great sweep of American history could be contained in just three generations of memory.
I wrote about Harrison and his brother Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. back in 2012 and again in 2020 when Lyon died.
John Tyler was born barely a year into George Washington’s first term and undoubtedly met and even worked with some of the nation’s earliest political figures, including Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. Amazing to think that just three generations of the same family stretch almost all the way back to the founding of our country. It underscores just how young the United States is — after all, the last person to receive a Civil War pension just died back in June.
You can read more about these sorts of human bucket brigades across time on The Great Span page. (via @jeremywallace.bsky.social)
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I'm curious who is now the earliest president with living grandchildren. The nearest I can figure is Warren Harding, who had a daughter with a mistress later on in life; his grandson, James Blaesing, was 75 in 2020, and I can't find any obituaries for him since then...?
Probably requires more confirmation than a Reddit post, but it appears the answer may actually be Grover Cleveland: https://www.reddit.com/r/BarbaraWalters4Scale/comments/1fbnj97/after_john_tyler_the_next_president_with_living/
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