How the Grandsons of the 10th US President Were Still Alive in 2020

The grandchildren still alive two centuries later

Copper engraving of John Tyler. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Yep, you read that right. Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. and Harrison Ruffin Tyler, both grandsons of John Tyler, 10th President of the United States, were still alive in 2020.

President John Tyler, born in 1790, became president between 1841–1845 after the previous one, William Henry Harrison, died just thirty days into his term.

John Tyler, born at the end of the eighteenth century, was alive for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the war of 1812, the Mexican American War, and died in the second year of the Civil War. Yet, he somehow still had grandchildren alive 158 years after his death.

How is it possible that a man born in 1790, alive at the same time as George Washington, still had grandchildren alive at the same time as you and I?

It’s all about young wives.

After John Tyler’s first wife died of a stroke in 1842, two years later, a 54-year-old Tyler took a 21-year-old Julia Gardiner as his second wife. Julia was five years younger than his oldest child and younger than three of his seven living children, making her the youngest first lady in history, and John Tyler the first president to marry while in the…