Here’s something worth noting: Harrison Ruffin Tyler, who was the grandson of America’s 10th president, John Tyler, has died in Virginia at the age of 98.
Harrison’s grandfather John was born in 1790, and ascended to the presidency in 1841 upon the death, after only 31 days in office, of William Henry Harrison (who, I must imagine, was the recently deceased Mr. Tyler’s namesake).
Imagine! A living bridge spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries in only three generations – and reaching back from today almost to the very beginning of the United States.
I’m sure that 1790-2025 (235 years!) must be a record for the birth of a U.S. President to the death of his last surviving grandchild. I wonder who’s in second place.
3 Comments
That is amazing. Vita brevis? Vita longa?
That is an amazing thought….I wonder if those first ones are listed on our current Social Security rolls?
During Covid, when I mentioned to people that my aunt had died in the Spanish influenza, I drew skeptical looks. The facts are, I am now 72 years old, my mother died in 2020 aged 98, and my aunt – my mother‘s oldest sister – died of the Spanish flu in 1919 aged 18 months.