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Cleopatra Lived Closer to the Computer Age than to the Pyramids, and Other Atypical History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 30, 2019 33 min

39. President Tyler, Born in 1790, Has Grandsons Living in 2019

As American presidents go, John Tyler (1790 – 1862) was nothing special. Elected as vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket, he became head honcho when the head of the ticket, William Henry Harrison, caught pneumonia while giving his inaugural speech, and died after a mere 31 days in office.

As president, Tyler turned out to be a mediocrity. Infuriating both his own Whig Party and the opposition Democrats, he muddled through to the end of a forgettable single term, failing to get re-nominated by his party. To the extent he is known to many today, it might be as one of the names in The Simpsons song, Mediocre Presidents. However, there is one extraordinary thing about Tyler: although he was born in the eighteenth century, in 1790, he has grandsons still living at the time of this writing (2019) in the twenty-first century. How did that come about?

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.