24. American President Born in the Eighteenth Century Has Grandsons Living in 2020
John Tyler (1790 – 1862) was nothing special, far as American presidents go. He was elected as vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket, then became president 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.
Tyler was a mediocrity as a president. He ended up infuriating both his own Whig Party and the opposition Democrats. Tyler muddled through to the end of a forgettable single term, and was not re-nominated by his party. To the extent that 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: weird as it sounds, although Tyler was born in the eighteenth century in 1790, he has grandsons who are still alive at the time of this writing (2020) in the twenty-first century. How did that come about?