Family and Personal Life
Tyler fathered more children than any other President in history. His first wife was Letitia Christian Tyler (November 12, 1790 – September 10, 1842), with whom he had eight children:
- Mary Tyler (1815–1847)
- Robert Tyler (1816–1877)
- John Tyler, Jr. (1819–1896)
- Letitia Tyler Semple (1821–1907)
- Elizabeth Tyler (1823–1850)
- Anne Contesse Tyler (1825-1825)
- Alice Tyler (1827–1854)
- Tazewell Tyler (1830–1874)
Tyler's wife Letitia died of a stroke in the White House in September 1842. His second wife was Julia Gardiner Tyler (July 23, 1820 – July 10, 1889), with whom he had seven children:
- David Gardiner Tyler (1846–1927)
- John Alexander Tyler (1848–1883)
- Julia Gardiner Tyler Spencer (1849–1871)
- Lachlan Tyler (1851–1902)
- Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853–1935)
- Robert Fitzwalter Tyler (1856–1927)
- Pearl Tyler (1860–1947)
Early in his presidency, Tyler was attacked by abolitionist publisher Joshua Leavitt, who alleged that Tyler had fathered (and sold) several sons with his slaves, prompting a response from the Tyler administration–linked newspaper The Madisonian. A number of African American families today have an oral tradition of descent from Tyler, but no evidence of such a link has ever surfaced.
As of January 2012, Tyler has two living grandsons through his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr., was born in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928. Harrison Tyler maintains the family home, "Sherwood Forest." Tyler is the oldest former President with living grandchildren, and none of the succeeding Presidents have living grandchildren until James A. Garfield, who served forty years after Tyler, with Abraham Lincoln and lifelong bachelor James Buchanan each having no living descendants of any kind.
Read more about this topic: John Tyler
Famous quotes containing the words family and, family, personal and/or life:
“If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.”
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
“The agent’s steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why, you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up—or else all go down—as one people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“I found my brother’s body at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks, by the river. Like an old, dirty rag nobody wants. He was dead. And I felt I had killed him. I turned back to give myself up.... Because if a man’s life can be lived so long and come out this way, like rubbish, then something was horrible, and had to be ended one way or another. And I decided to help.”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)