Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Grandson of the 10th President, Is Dead at 96
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, the last surviving grandson of John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, who was born just after George Washington became president 236 years ago and who served in the White House from 1841 to 1845, died on Sunday at his home in Richmond, Va. He was 96.
His death was confirmed by Annique Dunning, the executive director of Sherwood Forest Plantation, a private foundation established by the Tyler family.
Mr. Tyler suffered a series of small strokes starting in 2012 and was later diagnosed with dementia. In recent years, his son William Bouknight Tyler oversaw the James River plantation that had been his family’s ancestral home.
Mr. Tyler, a retired businessman, and his older brother, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. , who died at age 95 in 2020, were sons of Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr. (1853-1935), a longtime president of the College of William & Mary. Their grandfather was the U.S. president who pushed for the annexation of Texas as American expansion moved west, but he is perhaps best known for the Whig Party’s memorable 1840 presidential campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”
In a remarkable instance of successive longevities and late-in-life paternities, the Tyler family produced a genealogical marvel, if not a singularity: three generations that spanned nearly the entire history of the American experience.
Successive longevities over centuries are not uncommon, although they are not easily documented in ordinary families. But that was hardly the case with the former president and his academically distinguished son. And in 2012, when the website Mental Floss reported that two grandsons of President Tyler were still alive, the news — “an amazing, seemingly impossible piece of American trivia,” as New York magazine put it — went viral.
Yahoo, The Huffington Post, Fox News and Politico all rushed to publish articles. There were interviews with the grandsons, who told of other famous ancestors, including a great-grandfather, John Tyler Sr., born in 1747, who was a roommate of Thomas Jefferson at William & Mary, served in the Continental Army, became governor of Virginia and had eight children, including the future president.
“I heard too much about presidents growing up,” Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. told the Daughters of the American Revolution chapter in Dyersburg, Tenn., in 2013. He recalled family anecdotes about Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, the American Revolution, the Civil War and, especially, President John Tyler, his grandfather.
Born in 1790, less than a year after Washington’s first inauguration, John Tyler became the governor of Virginia, a United States representative and a senator. In the election of 1840, the Whig Party chose William Henry Harrison, a former governor of the Indiana Territory and senator from Ohio, as its presidential candidate, and Mr. Tyler as his vice-presidential running mate.
Historians say John Tyler, a lifelong slave owner and advocate of states’ rights, was selected to balance the ticket and attract Southerners who feared Mr. Harrison might harbor abolitionist leanings. Mr. Harrison, known as Old Tippecanoe, had led American forces that defeated Native Americans at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana in 1811.
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Fascinating history.
But there is only one way this was possible , his father , Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr., was 77 years old when Harrison Tyler was born in 1930.
And his grandfather was 63 when his father was born in 1853.
Seems like this guy was duty bound to have a kid as a senior citizen. Can't let family traditions end.
Remarkable.
His grandfather had been dead for 68 years when Harrison Tyler was born.
Quite a story.
Did he have any children?