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?