John Tyler was the first Vice-President to replace a president who died while still in office
Source: Internet Archive, A School History of the United States, from the Discovery of America to the Year 1878 (p.287)
John Tyler was the first Vice-President to replace a president who died while still in office
Source: Internet Archive, A School History of the United States, from the Discovery of America to the Year 1878 (p.287)
John Tyler was the Vice-President when President William Henry Harrison died in office in 1841. Tyler, the other half of the "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" ticket of the Whig Party, was at his home in Williamsburg when he received the news.1
news that Tyler was now President of the United States was delivered to him at his home in Williamsburg
Source: Library of Congress, Tyler receiving the news of Harrison's death [April 5, 1841]
President Tyler quickly became isolated from the Whig leaders, who called him "His Accidency." All but one member of Harrison's cabinet resigned, the Whigs expelled Tyler from the party, and for the first time articles of impeachment were introduced in the House of Representatives. The articles were introduced by US Representative John Minor Botts of Virginia.2
Letitia Christian Tyler, wife of the President, died from natural causes in the White House in 1842. In 1844, Tyler survived the accidental explosion of a naval gun during its demonstration on the USS Princeton. The president was below the deck when the gun exploded during a firing demonstration. Among the six who were killed were two Virginians serving in Tyler's Cabinet - the Secretary of State, Abel Upshur and the Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Gilmer. Also killed was Tyler's enslaved valet, whose name may have been Henry, Armistead, or Henry Armistead.3
President Tyler was belowdecks when the explosion of a naval gun killed, among others, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy
Source: Library of Congress, Awful explosion of the "peace-maker" on board the U.S. Steam Frigate, Princeton, on Wednesday, 28th Feby. 1844
The death of New York Senator David Gardiner in the explosion was also personal to John Tyler. The widowed president was pressing the Senator's daughter to marry him, and she fnally agreed after her father's death ended plans for a tour of Europe. She was 24 years old when she married. The honeymoon was at a cottage at Fort Monroe, followed by a stay at Tyler's Sherwood Forest in Charles City County.4
Julia and John Tyler had seven children together before he died in 1862. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetry in Richmond. Because he had supported secession and was elected to the Confederate Congress, Tyler's coffin was wrapped in a Confederate rather than a US flag. No other president of the United States has been buried with the flag ofanother nation.
Tyler's son Lyon Gardiner Tyler, born in 1853, also remarried late in life. When Lyon Tyler was 75, his son Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born. In 2020, Harrison Tyler was the last living grandson of President Tyler. John Tyler had been born 230 years earlier in 1790.
Harrison Tyler purhased Sherwood Forest from his relatives in 1975. His grandfather had retired there from the White House, and added a 68-foot ballroom so guests could dance the Virginia Reel. Sherwood Forest became the longest frame house in the country, stretching 300' from end to end.5