John Tyler ~ March 29, 1790 - January 18, 1862

10th President 1841-1845

John Tyler sites visited:

John Tyler has so many 'firsts' as president. To begin with he was the first Vice President to assume the Presidency upon the death of a President (William Henry Harrison). Congress thought he just assumed the powers of the Presidency but Tyler insisted that he had become the President. It's been the precedent ever since.

A Vice Presidential portrait and a ribbon from his presidential campaign, from a 2023 exhibit in the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Tyler purchased the Sherwood Forest Plantation in Charles City, Virginia, in 1842 and it has stayed in his family ever since. We visited in 2021 but found an appointment was needed for a house tour. Being on a road trip, there was no way we could do this. Maybe next time.

This is the only private residence to have been owned by two unrelated U.S. Presidents. William Henry Harrison inherited the estate in 1790, sold it in 1793, and never lived there. 

His favorite horse, General, is buried in the pet cemetery on the grounds with this epitaph:

"Here lie the bones of my old horse 'General,'

Who served his master faithfully

for twenty-one years,

And never made a blunder.

Would that his master could say the same!"

John Tyler wanted to be buried on his estate and even picked out the place. But after his death during the Civil War, his wife and children moved to Staten Island, having lost their slaves and most of the property due to the Union army occupying the plantation in 1862 and again in 1864.

Rapid City, South Dakota, City of Presidents statue:

He has a bust in the Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia.

Tyler's death was not recognized in Washington D.C. because he supported the Confederacy. Tyler had wanted a simple burial but the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, gave him a state funeral. John Tyler was buried under a Confederate flag in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, another presidential first and last.

In the same cemetery, we found the rather grand gravesite of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy from 1961 until the end of the war. He was captured by Union soldiers in May of 1865 and was imprisoned for two years. He died in 1889.

Davis' gravesite is grander than that of Tyler and James Monroe (also in this cemetery).

John Tyler continued to have children, 15 in all, holding the record for the most presidential children. His last child was born when Tyler was 70 years old, two years before his death. As of today, Tyler still has a living grandson, Harrison Tyler, born in 1928. Tyler was the first president to become a widower and the first to remarry while in the still in the White House. He died being a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.

Tyler's profile continues to look out over the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

"I can never consent to being dictated to."