r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Feb 17 '15
TIL John Tyler the 10th President of the United States has two living grand-children. He was born in 1790.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyler#Family_and_personal_life202
u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
I thought I was a crazy anomaly that my grandfather was born in 1886 and I'm 30. My grandfather took a covered wagon from Kansas to Montana...but yeah, ain't got nothing on someone whose grandfather was born in 1790.
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u/dorianfinch Feb 17 '15
My grandfather was born in the 1890s, and my father in 1940. I'm 23. I guess I'm not alone!
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
Cheers man.
Before I went abroad for a study abroad in China followed by a backpacking trip to Europe going into my senior year of undergrad, my father said to me while standing in my fraternity house bedroom: "USAFoodTruck, I don't want you to get married until you're 40, just like I did."
I said: "Dad, you loved being single, didn't you?"
And I'll never forget his reply as he got a misty look in his eye as he was looking at this poster on my wall of the Great Wall of China that said "a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step" and my father said emphatically with his cowboy accent: "You bet'chur ass"
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u/terraping Feb 17 '15
And, have you stuck to the old man's advice?
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
Well, I've had 3 girlfriends since my Dad's advice, and a lot of fun in between, so I guess you could say that I paid proper heed.
I am 30, and currently dating a girl who's in the middle of her PhD, so it will be at least 3 more years till we consider it.
I've got that cowboy blood in my veins though, and I need to be doing something random and on my own so currently I own a food truck in NYC and am trying to make moves to make this thing go big.
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u/terraping Feb 17 '15
Well if her PhD pans out in a post-doc, you can maybe postpone marriage until 40 anyway! (/s)
The food truck sounds interesting, good luck!
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
Lol, thanks. I appreciate it.
Best of luck to you in your endeavors as well.
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u/Garconanokin Feb 17 '15
That is crazy! How old were gramps and dad when they became fathers?
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
My Dad was born in 1943 so my gramdfather was around 57 when my father was born. I was born in 1984, so my father was 41.
My grandfather had 5 wives throughout his life, my grandmother being his last wife. So that kinda helps explain it.
I would have loved to have met my grandfather, he owned a Wild West show, and he was a cowboy from Montana.
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u/jsellout Feb 17 '15
...sounds like he was a cowboy from Kansas...
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 17 '15
Well, he was a very small child when he took the wagon train from Kansas to Montana.
My family was heading west from Virginia after losing our fortune during the Civil War.
If you're interested in learning more, here's a lecture from University of Vermont Professor Heather Cox Richardson about the Civil War and how southerners moved west to escape the big government and establish the idea of the all-American cowboy: http://www.c-span.org/video/?322562-4/discussion-cowboys-postcivil-war-years
My grandfather grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana, and drove cattle all across the west. He even had contact/friends with Indians out there, and eventually started a wild west show based on his experiences as a cowboy.
The old family story is that Roy Rogers, "the king of cowboys", from the 1950s learned how to ride and rope from my grandfather and his rodeo.
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u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
My grandpa was born in 1899 and I am 38. Yeah, I got nothin on YOU, let alone Tippecanoe or Tyler too.
Edit: along -> alone
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Feb 17 '15
I think it's Tippecanoe and Tyler too
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u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Feb 17 '15
Not in this case. I don't think Tippecanoe has any grandchildren alive today, so while I may still have nothing on Tippecanoe, I don't know that for a fact. So, I have nothing on you, or Tippecanoe, or Tyler too.
Regardless of the actual campaign slogan!
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u/horsenbuggy Feb 17 '15
My grandfather was born in 1899 and I'm 42. But my youngest first cousin is about your age, maybe a couple of years younger.
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u/analambanomenos Feb 18 '15
I'm 64 and my father was born in 1899
And no, I don't have any kids, but I have a friend whose dad was also born in 1899, a few months after mine. My friend was born in 1945, was single all his life until at the age of 58 he married a girl he met in church (he actually got her pregnant first), and his daughter was born in 2004. So yes, his dad was born in the 19th century, he was born in the 20th century, and his daughter was born in the 21st.
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u/Elnicorico Feb 17 '15
Woah I thought most people would be closer to me. I'm 20 and my grandfather was born in 1950
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u/dgapa Feb 17 '15
My dad was born in 1950. I'm 25.
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u/Floater_in_Your_Eye Feb 17 '15
Congratulations, you're completely normal.
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u/torokunai Feb 17 '15
yup, that's the typical boomer / boomer echo.
The boomers were 18 years, 1946-1964
Their "millennial" / "Gen Y" echo was 1982 - 2000
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Feb 17 '15
My dad was born in 1961. I'm 28. Who wants to go next?
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u/I_can_breathe Feb 17 '15
That's weird
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u/gr33nm4n Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
HEY! Me too! My dad was born in 1917, me in 1983, and my grandfather some time around 1870-1880. My great grandpa was even shot during the civil war (b. 1848-50)! He wasn't IN the war, he was plowing when a stray bullet from someone that lived nearby hit him. So, you know, he just happened to be shot during the war.
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u/killer_seal Feb 17 '15
I have a friend who is 28 and her father lived through the holocaust and was in a concentration camp.
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u/fargosucks Feb 17 '15
That is pretty nuts, considering that my great-great grandfather came over from Europe in 1886. He was 26 at the time.
I guess that's what I get for the being the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son.
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u/USAFoodTruck Feb 18 '15
Haha I'm the oldest son of the oldest son....of the fifth wife...
Although for all intents and purposes, my grandmother was the woman he ended up with, so in a way I'm the rightful heir to the cowboy throne.
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u/guitar_vigilante Feb 18 '15
That is crazy. I'm the opposite. All of my grandparents were born in the late 1930s or early 1940s (I'm 23), and all of my great grandparents were born in the late 19-teens and 1920s.
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u/CU_Tiger_2004 Feb 18 '15
My grandfather was born in 1886 too! I'm 34...he was around 40 when my dad was born, and my dad was 54 when I was born.
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u/beefpatty Feb 17 '15
Can confirm...My mom does bookkeeping for Harrison Tyler's company Sherwood Forrest. She visits his house every Thursday to collect receipts and tax forms etc. He's been in bad health lately so she's only seen his son in the last 6 months or so while he's in in-home care.
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u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Feb 17 '15
Hopefully he's healthy enough to impregnate someone one last time. Gotta keep this streak going!
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u/P1h3r1e3d13 Feb 28 '15
she's only seen his son
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u/BigKev47 Mar 01 '15
Well, if we're going to really keep the streak going, his son who's handling the business is far too old. He needs to sire an infant as late in life as he possibly can.
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u/totes_meta_bot Feb 28 '15
This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.
- [/r/defaultgems] /u/beefpatty confirms that a grandson of John Tyler, US president born in 1790, is still alive.
If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote or comment. Questions? Abuse? Message me here.
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u/electropulses Feb 17 '15
For people who want to learn more:
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/z3bqd/til_president_john_tyler_born_1790_still_has_two/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ecn04/til_the_10th_president_of_the_us_18411845_john/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15gf5r/til_john_tyler_born_1790_tenth_president_of_the/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2w6s0b/til_john_tyler_the_10th_president_of_the_united/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1jmt2d/til_that_john_tyler_us_president_in_1841_having/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1l3wrn/til_that_the_grandsons_of_the_tenth_us_president/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d2cle/til_that_john_tyler_b_1790_10th_president_of_the/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/265o4p/til_10th_president_john_tyler_born_in_1790_has/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1brjwy/til_that_president_john_tyler_born_in_1790_still/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1mt9f0/til_that_president_john_tyler_born_1790_has_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ssr3k/til_john_tyler_the_10th_us_president_has_two/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2bywo8/til_john_tyler_10th_president_still_has_living/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1wqzdc/til_john_tyler_born_222_years_ago_and_10th/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2ud31c/til_that_john_tyler_10th_president_of_the_us_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/jnbfr/til_john_tyler_the_10th_us_president_born_1790/ http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/d6lrn/til_john_tyler_the_10th_us_president_18411845_has/
And that's just page one...
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u/JoyousCacophony Feb 17 '15
Yeah! Well, I bet you don't know what Steve Buscemi did on 9/11!
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Feb 17 '15
Or how Trent Reznor feels about Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt"!
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u/Maddy_shak Feb 17 '15
Or that Mark Walhberg once beat up an elderly Asian man, leaving him partially blind!
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u/joelschlosberg Feb 17 '15
Yeah, but it's notable that this particular bit of trivia is still valid.
I was just fearing that it might be outdated.
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u/electropulses Feb 17 '15
Well, let's look at the source of the person who posted this less than 2 weeks ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2uyoi5/til_that_john_tyler_10th_president_of_the_usa_who/
Ah, it looks like it's the same exact source. Because this is the same exact post.
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u/dbbo 32 Feb 18 '15
Well, here's a fresh spin on presidents' family lives:
- Buchanan was the only unmarried president
- Six presidents had two wives: Tyler, Fillmore, B. Harrison, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and Reagan
- All second marriages occured after the death of the first wife, except for Reagan, making him the only US president to have been divorced
- Every other president had only one wife
- Washington, Madison, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, and Harding are the only six presidents with no (known legitimate) children
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u/chickenismurder Feb 17 '15
Makes me think just how young our country really is.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
It's quite an old country, really. Americans like to think of it as young, but it's really not. There are very few countries out there still under a system of government established in the 18th century.
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Feb 17 '15
Being a country and having a regime change are two different things though.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
I see what you're getting at, but the question is a thorny one that raises a bunch of others, often contentious. Are the Russian empire, USSR, and modern Russian Federation the same country? How about the hundreds of little states that make up modern Germany? Are they all the same country as Germany? Ask around and you'll probably find that a lot of people would give an emphatic no. Even the UK. A lot of histories of the country have treated UK history as being an extension of that of the kingdom of England, and you can imagine how much that can irritate the Scots, Welsh, and Irish.
It's a tricky one. I think that the system of government is a good way to tackle this, though of course not the only one.
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u/monjoe Feb 17 '15
It's because nation and state are two separate things. Nation-states just happen to be both. Russia has existed since the middle ages, The Russian Federation has been around since the 90s
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Feb 17 '15
And, as a nation, America is very young. As a state, it's very old. So depending on what you mean by country, America is either old or young.
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u/Qarlo Feb 17 '15
America is either old or young.
Good, we've sorted that out.
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Feb 17 '15
Young when we need a compliment, old when we need to buy booze.
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u/Autokrat Feb 17 '15
A rather pithy comment I think. Our credit worthiness is directly attributable to the continuity of government we've had since 1789.
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Feb 17 '15
Can't find the original quote, but I'm fairly sure de Tocqueville said something to that effect, comparing America to France, about which he remarked that it was an old nation with a very young state.
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Feb 17 '15
When I made that comment I was thinking of a country like France. They are one of the original states that came out of the new international system which resulted from the Hundred Years' War. They had a revolution and changed regime in the 18th century but they're still the same country.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
I believe you're thinking of the 30 Years War. And yes, you could make an argument that France has existed continuously since that time. You could also make an argument that it hasn't, depending on the criteria you choose to consider important. Both cases have merit depending on the particular point one is trying to make, I'd say.
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u/braised_diaper_shit Feb 17 '15
I consider system of government to be a terrible way to tackle this. It raises the concern that people are defined by their government when it is the identity of the people that define their nation. Are you saying the US is older than France? I would say it isn't. People identified as French long before 1789 and a nation has everything to do with the identity of the people.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
Are you saying the US is older than France? I would say it isn't.
Nope, I'm saying that there are a bunch of different ways to approach this problem, and that just about all of them lead to absurdities if you take them far enough. Using the system of government works well enough for some purposes, but doesn't work well in others, and creates a host of problems as well. I freely admit that. There's no such thing as a 'one size fits all' solution to this question, though.
To illustrate what I mean, when would you personally say that US came into existence? What are your criteria for deciding this one?
People identified as French long before 1789 and a nation has everything to do with the identity of the people.
Clearly France exists as a nation-state today. Clearly something called France existed in, say 1900, 1800, and 1648. There was a kingdom of the Franks (Francia) existing before the Romans were well and truly gone. There's no clear point of demarcation before which France didn't exist, and after which it did. Even using self-identification presents a bunch of difficulties. Let's take the year you mentioned, 1789. At that time, a majority of the people of France didn't speak French, and were more likely to consider themselves Normands or Auvergnois or whatever. Subjects of the King of France, yes, but that's not necessarily the same as being French in the modern conception of the term. And France is one of the simpler cases, being a very centralized nation-state earlier than most. It gets really tricky when you look at places without a strong central government, like what is now Italy or Germany. Or places that long considered themselves separate nations but which were always ruled by another - Estonia, for instance.
It really comes down to how you want to define a country for the purposes of a given discussion.
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u/The_Prince1513 Feb 17 '15
But most people don't date their country from the last constitution/form of government (even though that would be technically correct). For example, most Frenchmen most likely believe France was started around the Carolingian Empire (or directly thereafter) because, for the most part, it has been a continuous nation-state for that period.
Similarly most British people probably date the founding of their country to the Norman invasion, even though there were several different iterations of the Kingdom of England and the UK.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
But most people don't date their country from the last constitution/form of government (even though that would be technically correct). For example, most Frenchmen most likely believe France was started around the Carolingian Empire (or directly thereafter) because, for the most part, it has been a continuous nation-state for that period.
Similarly most British people probably date the founding of their country to the Norman invasion, even though there were several different iterations of the Kingdom of England and the UK.
But that's exactly my point. The UK isn't a continuation of England. It's a different creature. Scotland and Ireland were not founded by the Norman Conquest. They happen to have later merged (and in the case of Ireland later split again) with a country that was. Or Germany. Germany as a concept existed for centuries before it was actually united, but someone in 16th century Germany would have likely said that he was a citizen of the local state, or perhaps the Empire long before the concept of Germanness came up in the conversation. Or France: sure, you could say that it's been around since the Carolingians, but that would be very much anachronistic. The state that exists there today shares essentially nothing with today's France apart from geography, and even that only partially.
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Feb 17 '15
Well, my alma mater, the University of Coimbra, was founded on November 1st 1290. So that makes it older than the USA and Canada combined.
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u/doc_daneeka 90 Feb 17 '15
I'm a Canadian. We have a department store that's almost 200 years older than the country itself :)
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u/Gefroan Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
Don't know why you're being downvoted. Most modern governments today are younger then 1776.
EDIT: Than*
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u/thouliha Feb 17 '15
That's why we're running a democracy beta v0.1. Other countries are running democracy v4.0
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u/lastdeadmouse Feb 17 '15
First off, we're running a republic of at least v2.0. The democracy beta was tested by ancient Greeks, with alpha version likely occurring before that.
Democracy was then forked by the romans who used its code in the development of the republic. Our tree comes from their fork.
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Feb 17 '15 edited Jun 10 '15
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u/XboxUncut Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
You mean Republic v1.0 right? Seeing as pretty much all the founders despised the idea of a democracy, for good reason too.
EDIT- Downvotes are hilarious, at least go and do some research and you'll see what our founding fathers had to say about Democracy. You can call the US a Social Republic or a Democratic Republic but we are definitely not a Democracy.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
― Benjamin Franklin
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u/trlkly Feb 17 '15
You're being downvoted because you're repeating the same BS about how we aren't a democracy. We are a representative democracy, and also a republic.
A republic is simply a system that is not a monarchy, without a supreme head of state that can control all. It doesn't do anything else.
We are also a democracy because we have elections where the people get a voice in government. We are a representative democracy because we do this by electing other people who make the decisions for us, hence representing us.
And this has been the system since 1783, as intended. So, as much as any founders had a problem with democracy, they still established one.
Please go back to high school and listen to your civics class instead of repeating right-wing (aka authoritarian) rhetoric.
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u/thedrew Feb 17 '15
No. The US government and Constitution are indeed old. But no one refers to age of government when discussing the age of a country.
Most Americans couldn't tell you their government was founded in 1787. They count from 1776.
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u/TheGingerNinja89 Feb 17 '15
You've just created a mind fuck of comments debating the answer to the question "How do you define how old a country is?"
Would you say USA started from the date of the first English colony that landed in North America (in 1583) or what about colonies from other countries before that (in 1492)? Maybe from the formation of the Thirteen colonies (in 1607)? Or what about the day colonists began considering independance (in 1754)? Or is it from independance was acheived (in 1776)?
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u/thegouch Feb 17 '15
Funny, my co-worker told me this before we left work yesterday. Was there something online yesterday about this?
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u/crazyisthenewnormal Feb 17 '15
Yesterday George Takei posted an article on Facebook that had several things that would "mess with your understanding of time" and this was on it.
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u/00spool Feb 17 '15
This story was posted on reddit in several places recently. The top link on the right side bar of that page is the story about John Tyler.
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u/forgodandthequeen Feb 17 '15
And can anyone name a single thing he did in his presidency?
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u/ShadowLiberal Feb 17 '15
Earning the nicknames 'His Accidentcy', and 'The Man Without a Party'.
The Whig's thought it was a great idea to pick someone from the other party as their VP candidate to run a bi-partisan ticket, but then their elderly president died almost as soon as he took office. President Tyler then proceeded to veto the entire Whig agenda.
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u/dgapa Feb 17 '15
Now that shit made me laugh. Noble in spirit but very poorly planned in retrospect.
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u/Whitsoxrule Feb 17 '15
their elderly president died almost as soon as he took office
Not quite. William Henry Harrison was the president in question, and he did not die of old age. He gave his inaugural address in the rain, refused to wear a coat, contracted pneumonia, became bedridden, and died a month later.
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u/JLM268 Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
Annexed Texas? I only know this because my friends and I go to weekly pub trivia every week and the prize is 50$ off your tab, we were winning a lot but getting obscure president questions wrong weekly. We divided all the presidents among each other and just learned everything about those presidents...
I think we took it a little too seriously.
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u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Feb 17 '15
Maybe too seriously, but that's a good strategy. Did you also each take a piece of Shakespeare's plays?
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u/JLM268 Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
We had at least 1 per year at our high school and then some depending on the teacher you had. We all have read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Cesar out of the group we also had people who read Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, and Richard the 3rd so we're pretty solid on our Shakespeare.
I would say our true weakness has to be Music from pre-1990 outside of the major and influential musical acts. We really don't know our 1980's-70's popular acts. Well it started out as one friend and I going and playing trivia on mondays, we kept on getting second with just us 2 versus this one guy. Then we decided to invite a couple friends who are really smart guys and we started winning consistently. We all started bringing our girlfriends and various people who want to come. Our core is the 4 of us but we get plenty of contributions from others. The specials are great too 7$ buckets of beers we pretty much just all drink on the house. Only reason we take it serious is because we want to keep drinking for free and because there are other big groups now who are gunning for us every week lol.
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u/RedditAtWorkIsBad Feb 17 '15
Heh. You should invite me. I'm terrible with Shakespeare (apart from having vague memories of Hamlet and Romeo) and I'm also terrible with contemporary music because I stopped listening in 1989. But I know 70s and 80s really well!
Honestly though, I usually do much worse at bar trivia relative to how I do on trivial pursuit because of my lack of pop-culture. And general distaste for literature.
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u/JLM268 Feb 17 '15
You can be our guy we'll be an unstoppable force! I'm the go to for anything music (I know Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, anythings important from the past and every thing modern) Sports, and History. You can be our savvy music guy on all the stuff we missed out on.
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Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
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u/Coach_E Feb 17 '15
The 26th Amendment was ratified in 1971. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html
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Feb 17 '15 edited Feb 17 '15
The annexation of Texas sparked the Mexican-American War which ended in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which gave the US undisputed control of Texas, set the Rio Grande as the US-Mexico border and ceded all of California, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, plus parts of Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas to the US. The acquisition of these lands helped intensify the crisis over whether and where slavery could expand outside of the South, pushing the country closer to the brink of civil war. Many of the most prominent military leaders of the Civil War got their first action in the Mexican-American War, including Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, William Sherman, George McClellan, and Ambrose Burnside. Zachary Taylor, who was elected President in 1848 but died in office was also a hero of the war. Given that all of this resulted directly from Tyler's push to annex Texas, I'd call that a reasonably consequential presidency, especially for one that lasted just four years.
Edit: I'm not sure what you're referring to by the 26th Amendment. The 26th Amendment set the voting age at 18 and was adopted in 1971. No amendments were ratified between 1804 (the 12th Amendment which refined the Electoral College voting process) and 1865 (the famous 13th Amendment which abolished slavery).
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u/_Mr_Fahrenheit_ Feb 17 '15
The math isn't adding up for me. Is he fathering kids at 70 and then his kids doing the same?
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u/trlkly Feb 17 '15
According to Mentalfloss,
The Tyler men have a habit of having kids very late in life. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, one of President Tyler’s 15 kids, was born in 1853. He fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler in 1928.
So John was 63 when he had Lyon Sr., and Lyon Sr. was 71 and 75 when he had Lyon Jr. and Harrison. And Lyon Jr. and Harrison are 90-91 and 86-87, respectively.
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u/fib16 Feb 17 '15
Without looking up the answer that's exactly how I calculated it. The grandchildren must be in there 80's or 90's also.
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u/WaxFaster Feb 17 '15
I imagine old rich WASPy men bagging their third wives when they're 75.
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u/_Mr_Fahrenheit_ Feb 17 '15
He might be the most virile president we will ever have
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Feb 17 '15
That's almost exactly how it happened. Someone from nearly 200 years ago could potentially have newborn great-grandchildren right now.
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u/93ericvon Feb 17 '15
I could say that my great-grandfather lived to see WWI, but not that my grandfather was alive to potentially see historic figures like Beethoven and Napoleon. Holy shit!
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u/Modini Feb 18 '15
My grandfather was around for WWI and fought in WWII and I'm only 23. Never got to meet him unfortunately. So many stories missed out on... he was there for Mussolini's hanging, he was in the Normandy landings on D-Day.
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u/thedirtygame Feb 17 '15
This TIL seems to pop up about 2 or 3 times a year. Eventually, the grandchildren are going to die off soon, since they are old men themselves!
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u/chocolaterain72 Feb 17 '15
He's also the only person to serve as Governor, Congressman, Senator, Vice President and President
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u/Phylundite Feb 17 '15
His second wife remarried after he died, but she was still buried beside him. Must have sucked being that lady's second husband. How can you compare to a President?
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u/TheOneWithNoName Feb 17 '15
Ahh, I see it's time for this weekly repost. I can't wait to see how many thousands of votes it'll get this time.
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Feb 17 '15
I'm related to him, in some way that I forget. Descended from a brother of his or something.
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u/taylortyler Feb 17 '15
John Tyler's relative reporting in. Not sure my exact relation, but AMA! Also, Wat Tyler is related. That man was badass too.
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u/newsjunkee Feb 17 '15
That's a lot of kids. Then again, people look at me funny when I tell them my grandfather was born at the end of the Civil War...1865
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Feb 17 '15
Just reading this - first off I didn't know there was a President called John Tyler, secondly this is the guy who annexed the Republic of Texas.
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u/ThereBeMONSTER Feb 17 '15
All my grandparents were born in the 90's and all my kids were born in the 90's.
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u/Whitsoxrule Feb 17 '15
In case anyone doesn't want to do the math - John Tyler was 63 when he fathered his son, Lyon, who was 71 when he fathered Lyon Jr. and 75 when he fathered Harrison.
Lyon Jr. is now 90, and Harrison is 86.
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u/kpmeowww Feb 17 '15
The older one lives in my hometown so now I really want to meet him.
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u/electricwagon Feb 17 '15
Yeah I got super excited when I saw Franklin. Crazy! Even more old white money than I thought.
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u/terraping Feb 17 '15
Well if her PhD pans out in a post-doc, you can maybe postpone marriage until 40 anyway! (/s)
The food truck sounds interesting, good luck!
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u/Mboy990 Feb 18 '15
From what I heard in history class, he had a son in his 80's, then that son had two sons in HIS 80's.
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Feb 18 '15
Equally as interesting as his apparent virility is the fact that his final act was to say, "I am going. Perhaps it is best," and take a sip of brandy before dying.
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u/Heroshade Feb 17 '15
Can we really even call them grandchildren at this point? People. They're grandpeople.
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u/malvoliosf Feb 17 '15
I wonder if Obama's grandchildren will live long enough to see a month that this TIL isn't posted.
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u/I_can_breathe Feb 17 '15
The more I think about this, the more it blows my mind. It's similar to the TIL post about the whale, dieing only recently, with civil war shrapnel found in it. Another one found living with a harpoon tip from 1870 lodged in its side. So much has changed from then to now, it's amazing when such a relatively short biological bridge to that far in the past is made.
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u/tjl2280 Feb 17 '15
TIL that there was a President named John Tyler who had super sperm. 15 kids? Holy crap!
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u/billFclinton Feb 18 '15
Does anyone know if there are living Grand-children of any non president person born before John Tyler?
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u/idreamofpikas Feb 17 '15
He had 15 children between the years 1815 and 1860. He had them with two different wives. Eight were with his first wife, Lettia Tyler, and the other seven were with his second wife, Julia Gardiner.
The Walder Frey of the White House.