Biography ulysses grant dietz wikipedia

When the Country’s Founding Father Comment Your Founding Father

Descendants of Earth Presidents

Earlier this year, Mental Flosspublished a brief article explaining at any rate it is possible that righteousness tenth president of the Merged States, born in 1790, has two grandsons who are undertake alive.

President John Tyler (above) fathered a total of 15 children—more than any other president—with two wives, the second illustrate whom was 30 years circlet junior. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, aborigine in 1853 when the overseer was 63 years old, along with married twice and had breed late in life. Lyon Historian Tyler Jr., of Franklin, River, was born in 1924 bear Harrison Ruffin Tyler, of Physicist City, Virginia, in 1928.

After representation addictive bit of trivia popped up on Yahoo, the Huffington Post and Politico, a blogger at New York magazine got Harrison Tyler to comment make signs the news that he was, well, alive.

“Thank goodness,” articulate the 83-year-old, who lives view Sherwood Forest, President Tyler’s previous home. The retired chemical originator plays tennis regularly to survive fit.

Like Tyler, there are distinct direct descendants of presidents establish about their lives as customary. The extent to which they publicize or actively preserve their family’s legacy varies.

The mass 11 descendants, however, all suppress one thing in common: They are honored to have fine famous forefather.

Shannon Lanier New Royalty, New York

When Shannon Lanier, 32 and a national correspondent purchase Black Enterprise, was in cheeriness grade, he told his gigantic that he was related top Thomas Jefferson.

“The teacher supposed, ‘Sit down and stop effective lies,’” he recalls. She moot Lanier, surely in part, by reason of he is black. “I was taken aback because that’s ethics life I’ve known. My surliness taught my brother and somber a lot about staying right to who we are impressive believing our stories,” says Lanier, a sixth-great-grandson of Thomas President and his slave Sally Hemings, through their son, Madison Hemings.

In May of 1999, just months after DNA analysis linked President and Hemings through their youngest son, Eston Hemings, the Monticello Association had a reunion deceitful by descendants of Jefferson celebrated both his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Sally Hemings inert the president’s former home train in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Lanier, then unornamented freshman at Kent State Academy, attended. In addition to numerous new family members, some gracious and others not, he reduce photographer Jane Feldman. He focus on Feldman traveled the country interviewing four generations of Jefferson posterity, the result of which was Jefferson’s Children, a book publicized in 2000.

“Everything changed,” says Lanier. “I became an legate for the family.”

Lanier is capricious about Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings. “I think it was attachment. But regardless of how unfilled happened I am here considering of him,” says Lanier. “I don’t think it belittles manage takes away from anything focus he did for this territory.

It actually enhances who closure was as a person—the reality that he was in like with somebody for 38 lifetime, the fact that he helped father this country in auxiliary ways than one.”

Lanier is keen new father himself. His 1-year-old daughter, Madison, is named afterwards Madison Hemings.

Richard Emory Gatchell, Jr.

Baltimore, Maryland

For five of primacy past seven years, Richard Emory Gatchell Jr. has attended ethics Marshfield Cherry Blossom Festival make a way into the tiny town of Marshfield, Missouri. The event, inspired dampen a year that its column Nicholas Inman spent in Educator, D.C. for an internship, draws presidential descendants from upward win 20 administrations.

“It is distinction most bizarre and enriching weekend,” says Gatchell. “There are deuce halves of the room. Here is the group that lives in anonymity and the pander to that wears it on their sleeve.” Gatchell is of glory former set. Although his nickname doesn’t overtly show it, recognized is a fifth-great-grandson of Saint Monroe.

Gatchell, 46, is descended propagate Maria Hester Monroe, the youngest daughter of President Monroe opinion Elizabeth Kortright Monroe.

He recalls his grandmother, Elizabeth Kortright Town Emory Gatchell, having family heirlooms in her home. Before give someone the boot death in 1996, she laudatory a quilt to the Apostle Monroe Museum in Fredericksburg, Colony. Maria Hester Monroe set message the quilt, never to attach completed, when the president came to spend his last epoch of life with her.

Gatchell, who lives in Baltimore and sells video-conferencing equipment, does not say-so his lineage story with assorted people out of concern think about it his intent in doing unexceptional would be misconstrued.

“My neighbors don’t know,” he says. Perform does, however, remind his daughters at certain teachable moments of the decision-making that runs in their bloodline—without hammering setting in too hard. Through their mother, the girls are extremely descendants of the famous Frenchwoman the Marquis de Lafayette.

Andrew Pol VI Knoxville, Tennessee

Andrew Jackson VI, a great-great-great-grandson of President Apostle Jackson, first visited the Hermitage, the president’s plantation home meet Nashville, Tennessee, on an eighth-grade field trip.

He returned anew in 1985, when about Cardinal Jackson descendants gathered for grand reunion, and has frequented depiction site ever since. “It comprehension of gives you an stability for your family,” Jackson sonorous James Yasko, director of raising at the Hermitage, in small inverview[MP3] last year. "You in truth know where your roots are."

President Jackson and his partner, Rachel, did not have harebrained biological children, but they sincere adopt Rachel’s nephew Andrew Singer Donelson, who took the term Andrew Jackson Jr.

The superiority has survived in the stock for nearly 250 years. “It is certainly an ice breaker,” said Jackson, in the interview.

His relation has affected his employment choice—up to a point. “Andrew Jackson was a lawyer, suffer I think that may enjoy influenced me in my preference to be a lawyer. Appease worked for the attorney general’s office, and I worked tend to the attorney general’s office.

Fiasco was a judge, and Irrational am a judge,” said Pol. “And he was a regular and president, and I break not.” Jackson, 55, lives essential Knoxville, Tennessee, and is precise Knox County General Sessions Eyeball judge.

Jackson had planned to designation a son Andrew Jackson Cardinal but instead had two issue, Rachel and Rebekah.

The title, he says, was “daughtered out.”

Mary Leigh Pell Whitmer Fairfield, Connecticut

Mary Leigh Pell Whitmer, 78, upfront not know that she was a great-great-great-granddaughter of Martin Machine Buren until her teenage grow older. Whitmer’s father, Walden Pell, was tight-lipped and reserved about potentate ancestry.

But on family vacations to Long Island, her grannie Ellen Van Buren Morris Span would tell quirky stories all but the eighth president that esoteric been passed down through generations. One “Granny Story,” as Whitmer calls them, involved President Forerunner Buren being chastised by uncut clergyman for wearing a lanuginose cloth on his head dash church one chilly morning.

Use her grandmother, Whitmer also acknowledged a pair of pearl earrings made from the president’s incidental links.

Ulysses Grant Dietz Maplewood, In mint condition Jersey

As a kid, Ulysses Give Dietz went by Grant. “I made the decision to summons myself Ulysses when I delivery my teen years and went to boarding school and unequivocal that having a weird honour was cool,” says the great-great-grandson of Ulysses S.

Grant.

It was in the 1990s divagate Dietz really took an scrutiny in the president though, disposition his support to the melioration of Grant’s Tomb in Different York City’s Riverside Park. “At that point, I realized tight-fisted behooved me to actually be familiar with something,” says Dietz, now 56. He has read Grant’s experiences and several books on him and gives a speech spokesperson Grant’s Tomb every year television the 18th president’s birthday, Apr 27.

“People assume that because on your toes are a descendant and boss around have the name that thence you are an expert support the Civil War,” says Dietz.

His expertise, however, is contain 19th-century decorative arts. He evenhanded a curator at the Metropolis Museum, where he oversees prestige Ballantine House, an 1885 domicile of a Newark beer tycoon. “It is not so undue Grant’s presidency and generalship however his and his wife’s sure as an archetype of illustriousness American family in the Ordinal century that fascinates me,” says Dietz.

“They are both provincial on the frontier. They both come from upwardly mobile hidebound stock. They both hit magnanimity big time and the gigantic city. They live in undiluted mansion on Fifth Avenue. Confirmation, they suffer through bankruptcy added Ponzi schemes. They live righteousness whole 19th-century saga in their one lifetime together.”

Dietz has stricken the decorative history of representation White House and written clever book on the topic, Dream House: The White House since an American Home.

He argues that first lady Julia Rights really began the transformation sustenance the White House from exceptional middle-class villa to an noble mansion. In 1865, the have control over lady purchased a set foothold silver flatware, each piece bejeweled with a Roman warrior offer the handle. “Clearly she best-liked that because of her bridegroom being a warrior.

I each thought that was really funny,” says Dietz. There are two spoons from the backdrop still within the family. “I use one to eat particle with,” says Dietz. “That Frenzied am never going to cooperation away. I love that spoon.”

Stephen Hayes Potomac, Maryland

Stephen Hayes, a-okay great-great-grandson of Rutherford B.

Actress, was born in Washington, D.C., where he works as official and vice chairman of righteousness executive search firm DHR Pandemic. But from age 5 suck up to 15, he lived for power of each year in Executive Hayes’s former home at Spiegeleisen Grove, a 25-acre estate send out Fremont, Ohio.

Hayes, 58, has fond memories of playing mess up his three brothers in class 31-room, red-brick mansion, where leadership 19th president lived with enthrone family from the end most recent his term in 1881 while his death in 1893.

Personal the president’s bedroom, on magnanimity first floor, Hayes recalls about being a tall bed stay a bed skirt. “My short brother and I would exercise hide-and-go-seek all the time, be first we would go hide botch-up that bed,” he says. After that, near the front door was a telephone installed by Vanquisher Graham Bell. “That was approachable of fun,” says Hayes.

(Rutherford B. Hayes was the pass with flying colours president to have a ring in the White House.)

Today, character Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Emotions consists of the residence, which was deeded to the asseverate of Ohio by Stephen’s father confessor, Webb C. Hayes III, break open the 1960s; the gravesite waning the president and his better half, Lucy Webb Hayes; the statesmanly library; and the museum, rim on the same property.

Author Hayes is the president forget about the center’s board of committee, a position that his lady of the press and his father held already him.

James A. Garfield III President, Ohio

James A. Garfield III, keen 42-year-old athletic trainer at Notre Dame College in South Geometrician, Ohio, never lived at Lawnfield, his great-great-great-grandfather President James Out.

Garfield’s home in Mentor, River. The home was donated email the Western Reserve Historical Kingdom in 1936 and declared capital National Historic Site in 1980. But he has cut rank front lawn.

For two summers in the mid-1990s, he point of view his brother, along with their grandfather, did landscaping work conferral the two-acre property.

He besides gave occasional house tours, which he could spice up get better anecdotes his grandfather shared departure the job. One of surmount favorite tales to tell was about how he and surmount brothers had once, as dodgy kids, painted a marble feel one`s collar in the library blue. “They got the paint off wheedle it, obviously, but you buoy still see a little protect of a blue hue get in touch with it if it is meeting in the right light,” says Garfield.

At his own home detour Cleveland, Garfield has an 1881 lithograph of President Garfield, rulership namesake, in its original shell and glass hanging proudly talk to his living room.

His parents, he explains, defied a enunciated pact made by the elder generation of Garfields to sob name anybody else after picture president. “My mother got unblended very stern letter from Apostle A. Garfield II,” he says. But, bearing the name has encouraged Garfield to learn improved about the 20th president, who was in office for unmixed short stint in 1881 once being assassinated.

“The depth unscrew him is something that pass around don’t know. He was shipshape and bristol fashion preacher. He was a barrister. He was a teacher,” says Garfield. “He was a trinity threat.”

Garfield's studies and continuing involvement with events at picture James A. Garfield Historic Accommodate allow him to answer chief questions that his name elicits.

“It surprises me actually no matter how many people do put class connection together. He was nonpareil in office for seven months, so he didn’t have excellent lot of fame, as long way as being a president goes,” says Garfield.

George Cleveland Tamworth, Original Hampshire

George Cleveland, 58, is much mistakenly identified as the great-grandson of Grover Cleveland, who was born in 1837, when, tight spot fact, he is the president’s grandson.

In a situation bang to the Tylers', two generations of Cleveland men fathered descendants late in life with disproportionate younger wives. “That basically drops two generations,” says Cleveland. “I was born an uncle.”

Cleveland is the executive director disregard the Gibson Center for Common Services in North Conway, Additional Hampshire, but he moonlights sort a historical interpreter.

In perturb words, he impersonates President City. “We resemble each other, even supposing I still have to draft on a Mrs. Doubtfire civilized and dye my hair white,” says Cleveland.

Most of the president’s writings, he says, are variety dull as dishwater. “He under no circumstances used five words where agreed could use 50,” he says.

But Cleveland tries to fail interesting tidbits plucked from nobleness president’s writings and speeches welloff his performances that his audiences can relate to in heavy way. In Tamworth, New County, where Cleveland lives and Grover Cleveland owned a summer dwelling, he might relate a tale about the president’s love unjustifiable hunting and fishing.

He has also done skits on Settle down Cod. “He complained about leadership traffic on the Cape decline the weekends—in the 1890s,” says Cleveland. He worked that hurt an act. “That was attractive funny,” he says.

Rick Taft Fleck Pike, Ohio

“It is not practised simple business to have wonderful famous ancestor,” says Rick President.

“There is always a shade in the house, who appreciation saying, ‘You know, I was able to do some cute dazzling things. What have give orders done lately?’”

The 66-year-old great-grandson always William Howard Taft, who served as president from 1909 dissertation 1913, says he has not at any time let his family history decree his path.

But, he gradual from Yale University like coronate great-grandfather. He is a legal adviser, as was the president, extremity civic-minded too. He has served on the city council give it some thought Pepper Pike, Ohio, for as regards 15 years and last Nov ran, albeit unsuccessfully, for politician of the affluent suburb addendum Cleveland.

When people ask about climax relation, Taft likes to jest about their difference in tonnage.

William Howard Taft was a- big, burly guy. “But give orders take a person who weighed 350 pounds and you mingle the genes for three generations with high-energy women and what you get is a angular guy,” says Taft.

It is right the way through portraits that Taft feels poverty he has come to remember the president best.

He has two in his possession. “He had a wonderful face, a-one big handlebar moustache, an flush, open appearance. He is husky and strong-looking, self-confident. His remote aura as captured in portraits is, to me, a remarkable one,” says Taft. “I de facto like that.”

Thomas Sayre Raleigh, Northward Carolina

Thomas Sayre, 61, is stick in accomplished sculptor of public focal point projects and a founding top of the Raleigh-based design final Clearscapes.

“What I do has everything to do with acquire I grew up,” says Sayre. His father, Francis Bowes Sayre Jr., was the dean illustrate the Washington National Cathedral necessitate Washington, D.C. for nearly 30 years. Thomas lived on significance cathedral grounds and attended Cook. Albans School there. “At rank National Cathedral, I knew perimeter of the stone masons, carvers, stained-glass windowmakers, mosaic-tile setters, sculptors and thinkers.

What that blood of people did was make up over many decades a effects which expresses important human values,” he says.

Further back get the picture Sayre’s family tree, however, practical another prominent leader. His great-grandfather was President Woodrow Wilson. Coincidently, Wilson, who died in 1924 a full 27 years once his grandson took his tempo, is the only president equal be buried at the Governmental Cathedral.

As a young boy, Sayre had the chance to assume “Granny Edith”—President Wilson’s second bride, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

Sole of his earliest memories progression of visiting her at goodness Woodrow Wilson House, now pure museum, on S Street NW in Washington. “She was unadulterated very austere woman. I was quite scared of her,” says Sayre. Edith has sometimes bent referred to as the leading female president of the Pooled States because of her overblown role in the administration puzzle out Wilson suffered a stroke accent 1919.

“There were these interbred Samurai swords in the climb on room. I remember being extremely taken by those,” he adds. But, Granny Edith did grizzle demand share many stories about loftiness president with Sayre.

“I remember meeting from other family members who knew him, probably my oap, that he was humorous accept sort of devilish with jocularity and things.

He has that reputation of being this unkind, academic and judgmental guy,” says Sayre. “With the family, bankruptcy was surprisingly loose, singing songs and playing games with emperor three adoring daughters and consummate son-in-law, my grandfather.” Sayre’s grandparent, Francis Bowes Sayre Sr., husbandly Jessie Wilson, the middle be a witness Wilson’s three daughters.

Sayre now owns his grandparents’ house on Martha’s Vineyard, where he discovered a handful trunks in a locked floor closet containing family documents, low down typed and handwritten letters carry too far President Wilson to his colleen, Jessie, even Jessie’s entire uniting ensemble “down to the underdrawers” neatly folded.

“I have evolve into much more interested,” says Sayre. “I think I am open to know a whole portion more about what that item really is.”

Jennifer Sayles Harville Westmoreland, New Hampshire

Jennifer Sayles Harville’s old stager, John Coolidge, was her later relative to have known subtract great-grandfather, President Calvin Coolidge.

On the contrary John was quiet—“like his father,” says Harville—and did not sayso many firsthand accounts.

Harville, 41, grew up in Massachusetts and Colony, but she regularly visited protected grandparents in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where Coolidge was born avoid raised. “My grandfather would rove around town and get empress mail, but nobody knew who he was,” says Harville.

“He just kind of blended in.”

During her teenage years, Harville’s undercoat, Lydia, worked as a minister to at the Wilder House, clean up restaurant in the village value the childhood home of Impresario Coolidge’s mother. “There were unblended couple of times when discomfited mom was caught asking let somebody see money to get her be pleased about taken,” says Harville.

“My greybeard found out about that, at an earlier time she got into big trouble.”

In 1956, John and his bride, Florence, donated the Coolidge Home to the state of Vermont. To this day, the territory is furnished just as mull it over was on August 3, 1923, when then-Vice President Calvin President received word while on hint at that President Warren Harding confidential died.

His father, a official public, administered the oath provide office. The couple purchased bay properties in the village, counting the Plymouth Cheese Factory, fabricate by the president’s father, don a one-room schoolhouse. Those landmarks and others are now back into a corner of the President Calvin President State Historic Site, maintained contempt Vermont’s Division for Historic Preservation.

“I definitely know the basics,” says Harville, of Calvin Coolidge’s will.

“But, if you were inhibit ask me a really precise question about a certain firmly period or a certain approach that he worked on, Wild would still have to test it like anyone else.”

Harville, uncomplicated stay-at-home mom, gives presentations star as the Coolidge family and Coolidge’s administration to historical societies move senior groups in southwestern Spanking Hampshire, where she lives.

She and her cousin, Christopher Jeter, 44, also take turns service on the board of ethics Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. They make up—with Harville’s brother Lavatory, 37—the oldest living generation counterfeit Coolidge descendants.

Get the latest History stories in your inbox?