president tylers (born in 1790) grandsons are still alive

[rdking647]

that just makes you go wow.
3 generations span all of american history.
tyler was born during the life of george washington.
he took office after william henry harrisons death in 1841

Wow....

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/former-president-john-tyler-1790-1862-grandchildren-still-191230189.html

[rurallib]

1. IIRC he had a bundle of kids- couple different wives? late into life.

and IIRC he went with the confederacy in the civil war.

[Arugula Latte]

2. Whoa. That kind of stuff just blows my mind.

[TwilightGardener]

3. Now that is interesting.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Wow indeed.

Please forgive my self-indulgence, but this thread started me on a reverie of my own that I felt compelled to write.

My father was born in 1897 on a farm/ranch in So. Dak, in a world of horses, buckboards, and incomplete railroad lines. I was very close to him through my childhood until he died in 1966. It blows my mind to know that I had access to the wisdom and love of this man who was 5 when the Wright Brothers flew, and who lived to see and wonder at the broadcasts of the first manned orbital flights around the moon.

[southernyankeebelle]

8. Wow what history you had. You should make sure you sit down and tell some of the

stories you were told on video to pass on to your future generations. I always say you don't know where your going unless you know where you came from. Really you need to pass it on.

Funny I am 64 yrs old. I have a 6 yr old granddaughter who loves to help me cook. My health isn't the best. But I sat down yesterday and started writting receipes that I know she will love to learn that my mother taught me. My son and his wife don't seem to think much about history of family. I guess when your young may think that way. I sure wasn't. I wanted to make sure my husband and granddaughter can do it together. I just want to make sure she'll have them because I live in the south and these dishes are Italian and people around here don't usually taste this kind of food.
I

[Jackpine Radical]

9. I'm 67. I've written a bit about those stories.

I'm not sure that anyone much cares, though.

My dad & his 2 brothers moved to Wisconsin in 1910 when they were kids, & the family homesteaded on logged-over land near an Indian reservation. The boys, coming from the prairie, learned the ways of the north woods from Ojibwa Indians, some of whom were lifelong friends. There were indians at my father's funeral. I hunted & fished with my dad & his brothers, so my roots are very entangled in that history.

[southernyankeebelle]

11. Wow it sounds so interesting. Don't you believe no one would be interested in it. Believe me they

may not now but your kids and grandkids will when you are gone. I learned alot of oral history through my parents. I have had an interesting history. Look in the summer time when your sitting on your porch just start talking. I bet you start with the Indians you will get the attention fast especially with the grandkids. My grandson loves to hear those kinds of stories. He is only 10 and he loves to hunt and fish. It just takes a moment and you got them. When I was in my early 20s before my dad died he started telling us stories about WWII. My goodness what stories he told us. Also how he got wounded with machine gun fire right up the leg. I have so many stories that were so interesting my parents told me and the rest of us that I will sit down and give oral history. You repeating them over and over and by the time they are grown they start telling the stories. Heck I don't even know you and the Indians sound so interesting. I bet you have lot of stories. Don't hold back.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. We ought to encourage people to do this, to write their histories, to preserve

the stuff about daily life. My family left South Dakota in 1910 due to a long drought. There is a story of my grandfather walking along the railroad tracks near the Missouri River, picking the beans & bits of coal that had fallen off passing trains hauling bean crops from places in the west to markets in the east in order to feed and warm his family. I think stories like that are important to our understanding of where we actually came from. People in small rural communities lived in very communually-oriented societies. They engaged and helped each other in many ways, from barn-raisings to barn dances. Those of us from peasant backgrounds are very used to the idea of mutual assistance. "They" are trying to make us forget this.

[southernyankeebelle]

17. My mother-in-law told us so many funny stories when she was a kid. Oral history is

wonderful. Kids will listen. My mother-in-law she had an older brother who always managed to get her in trouble. Her dad was a Lutheran minister and they grew up in a strict home. Her brother one time told her to bring a skunk to her class and let it out. Of course the school was very rural small class. She released it and all the kids come running out of the school. They knew she did it because she got sprayed. LOL needless to say she got in trouble for that. She was a tomboy and she had to do alot of the hard labor. Then she told me sad stories. He dad died in his early 40s and she came from a big family. Her mother ended up marrying the handy man and they were married many years. So many interesting stories. My own mother telling me what it was like when the planes came overhead dropping bombs on Italy during the war and how they took turns staying up listening for the planes so they could pick up her little brother who was handicapped and they could run for shelter. Then telling me the story when Mussolini was killed and her dad and her stood on the balcony having a glass of wine to his death. These are oral stories. We have them pass them on. I remember when my son was little and my husband went away for a year in the military. I had him sitdown and read childrens books in a tape recorder and every night I would play it for him. Our kids will only forget if we don't tell them the stories.

[TheOther95Percent]

5. Mr Other95percent met one of the grandsons two years ago

Mr. Other95percent is quite the history buff and met one of the grandsons at a symposium a couple years ago. He's been saying "Wow" ever since. He's going to another one of these things in February so I'll have to ask him if Tyler's grandkid showed up again.

[provis99]

6. the article got some facts wrong.

Canada became a nation in 1867, not 1841. And all former presidents are officially mourned, even Hoover and Nixon.

[bluestateguy]

7. W-A-S-P

I'm not part of that crowd.

[kestrel91316]

10. I am sitting at a table as I type this, that was sat at in the 1920s by a man

who, in his youth, worked in the law office of Abraham Lincoln (who just happened to be his father's law partner in IL). It came through that man's daughter to my grandfather (who was chauffeur/handyman for the old guy and daughter when he was young) and thence to me.

The old guy left a pipe burn on its lovely finish, but I treasure it because the hands that left it might have touched Lincoln's hand.

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. As near as I can figure, I have two or three degrees of separation from Lincoln

my grandfather was born in 1923; his great-uncle Levin, who was born in 1855, worked as an apprentice in his uncle's photography studio in Washington DC. The uncle was Mathew Brady; Levin would've been old enough to've met Lincoln himself...so I can say I knew someone who knew someone who knew Lincoln, which is a little mind-blowing when you consider we're talking about nearly 150 years.

[JI7]

12. i guess if you have kids in your 60s and 70s , Strom Thurmond had all his kids in his late 60s and

70s. actually, he did have the one kid in his 20s with a black woman. i still find the story of thurmond and his first daughter interesting. they seemed to have a good relationship and he supported her financially throughout his life even when she was older.

i wonder if they ever talked politics. i just looked it up and saw she said she tried to talk to him about racism but he didn't really listen.

[The Genealogist]

15. That is fascinating

In fall of 2009, I took my stepmother (nearly 60 years old herself) to her GRANDMOTHER'S 101st birthday party. That alone was pretty amazing, when I did the math and pegged milestones of her life in my mind. But there was a fascinating dimension to this lady's life: her father had been in the civil war. I was at the birthday party of the child of a Civil War Veteran, nearly a century and a half after that war ended. It sort of blew my mind!

[ellisonz]

16. Go to the American and World History Groups

American: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1163

World: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1166

Free

[WI_DEM]

18. Interesting, Tyler was also a traitor having joined the Confederate Congress prior

to his death