Presidents and First Ladies Trivia

[L Verge]

Rob's right, and one can visit Tyler's Sherwood Forest plantation in Virginia. We took a bus tour from Surratt House to those wonderful old Tidewater plantations and manor homes many long years ago. In each and every one of them, you have to wish the walls could talk. Just gaining an appreciation for the culture of their respective eras is a lesson all in itself.

Sherwood Forest is the only private home in the U.S. to have been owned by two, unrelated Presidents. William Henry Harrison inherited it in 1790 and sold it in 1793, without ever living there. At that time, its name was Walnut Grove. Tyler purchased it in 1842, and it still remains in his family. So far as I know, it is still lived in by one of Tyler's two surviving grandsons. The President was a prolific producer of children - eight by Letitia, wife #1, and seven by Julia, wife #2. There is an interesting historical novel about Wife Julia and her "life" during the Civil War after the death of Tyler in 1862. The book is entitled The Rebel and the Rose.

In 1864, the house was occupied by staff from a Union regiment from Ohio. When they vacated the house, they set fire to it. A loyal Tyler slave extinguished the flames and there was little damage.

Remember that President Tyler died during the Civil War, and President Lincoln refused to recognize his passing - thus no state funeral for a former head of state. Lincoln considered Tyler a traitor for siding with his home state and the Confederacy. Seems strange to me, since Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy as a separate country.