Share some things about William Henry Harrison, Sr., 9th president of the USA
"...William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was the ninth President of the United States (1841), an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. He was 68 years, 23 days old when elected, the oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the United States Declaration of Independence. Harrison died on his 32nd day in office of complications from pneumonia, serving the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment..."
"...Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought an end to hostilities in his region..."
"...After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to the United States Congress, and in 1824 he became a member of the Senate. There he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia, he spoke with Simon Bolívar about the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio, where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before being elected president in 1840, and died of pneumonia a month later..."
"...William Henry Harrison was born February 9, 1773, the youngest of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth Bassett's seven children. They were a prominent political family who lived on Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia. He was the last president born as a British subject before American Independence. His father was a planter and a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was governor of Virginia between 1781 and 1784. William's older brother Carter Bassett Harrison was elected a representative of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives..."
"...In 1787, at the age of 14, Harrison entered the Presbyterian Hampden-Sydney College..."
"...He allegedly became involved with the antislavery Quakers and Methodists at the school..."
"...Angered, his pro-slavery father had him transfer to Philadelphia, where he boarded with Robert Morris..."
"...Shortly after he had arrived in Philadelphia in 1791, his father died, leaving him without funds for further schooling. Eighteen years old, he was left in the guardianship of Morris..."
"...Governor Henry Lee of Virginia, a friend of Harrison's father, learned of Harrison's impoverished situation after his father's death and persuaded him to join the army..."
"...After the death of his mother in 1793, Harrison inherited a portion of the family's estate, including about 3,000 acres (12 km2) of land and several slaves. Still in the army at the time, Harrison sold his land to his brother..."
"...In 1795 Harrison met Anna Symmes, of North Bend, Ohio. She was the daughter of Judge John Cleves Symmes, a prominent figure in the state, and former representative to the Congress of the Confederation...."
"...he and Anna eloped and married on November 25, 1795..."
"...together they had 10 children. Nine lived into adulthood and one died in infancy. Anna was frequently in poor health during the marriage, primarily due to her many pregnancies. Nevertheless, she outlived William by 23 years, dying at age 88 on February 25, 1864..."
"...Harrison defeated the son of Arthur St. Clair and was elected as the first delegate representing the Northwest Territory in the Sixth United States Congress. He served from March 4, 1799, to May 14, 1800.As a delegate from a territory, not a state, he had no authority to vote on bills but was permitted to serve on a committee, submit legislation, and debate...."
"...As delegate, Harrison successfully promoted the passage of the Harrison Land Act..." "...The committee recommended splitting the territory into two segments, creating the Ohio Territory and the Indiana Territory..."
"...Without informing Harrison, President John Adams nominated him to become governor of the new territory, based on his ties to "the west" and seemingly neutral political stances. Harrison was confirmed by the Senate the following day..."
"...Harrison moved to Vincennes, the capital of the newly established Indiana territory, on January 10, 1801...."
"...As governor, Harrison had wide ranging powers in the new territory, including the authority to appoint all territorial officials, and the territorial legislature, and to control the division of the territory into political districts. A primary responsibility was to obtain title to Native American lands..."
"...Indian resistance movement against U.S. expansion had been growing through the leadership of the Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (The Prophet)..."
"...In August 1810, Tecumseh led 400 armed warriors down the Wabash River to meet with Harrison in Vincennes....
"...After the meeting, Tecumseh journeyed to meet with many of the tribes in the region, hoping to create a confederation to battle the United States..."
"...Harrison led an army of more than 1,000 men north to try to intimidate the Shawnee into making peace. Instead, the tribes launched a surprise attack on Harrison's army early on the morning of November 6, in what became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Harrison defeated the tribal forces at Prophetstown, next to the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers. Harrison was hailed as a national hero and the battle became famous. His troops had greatly outnumbered the attackers, and suffered many more casualties during the battle..."
"...many Americans blamed the British for inciting the tribes to violence and supplying them with firearms. In response, Congress passed resolutions condemning the British for interfering in American domestic affairs. A few months later, the U.S. declared war against Great Britain..."
"...The outbreak of war with the British in 1812 led to continued conflict with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, and Harrison was kept in command of the army in Indiana..."
"...After receiving reinforcements in 1813, Harrison took the offensive. He led the army north to battle the Shawnee and their new British allies. He won victories in Indiana and Ohio and recaptured Detroit, before invading Canada. He defeated the British at the Battle of the Thames, in which Tecumseh was killed..."
"...After the war, Harrison was appointed by President James Madison to serve as a commissioner to negotiate two treaties with the Indian tribes in the Northwest..."
"...Harrison was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives...serving from October 8, 1816, to March 4, 1819..."
"...Appointed as minister plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia, Harrison resigned from Congress and served in his new post until March 8, 1829. He arrived in Bogota on December 22, 1828. He found the condition of Colombia saddening. Harrison reported to the Secretary of State that the country was on the edge of anarchy and he thought Simón Bolívar was about to become a military dictator..."
"...After Harrison returned to the United States in 1829, he settled on his farm in North Bend, Ohio, his adopted home state. There, he lived in relative retirement after nearly 40 years of continuous government service..."
"...Between 1836 and 1840, Harrison served as Clerk of Courts for Hamilton County. This was his job when he was elected president in 1840. By 1840, when Harrison campaigned for president a second time, more than 12 books had been published on his life. In many, he was hailed as a national hero..."
"...When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe. He took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day. He wore neither an overcoat nor hat, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. It took him nearly two hours to read the speach..."
On March 26, Harrison became ill with a cold...The cold worsened, rapidly turning to pneumonia and pleurisy..."
"...He died nine days after becoming ill, at 12:30 am on April 4, 1841..."
"...Harrison's funeral took place in the Wesley Chapel in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841. His original interment was in the public vault of the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. He was later buried in North Bend, Ohio. The William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial was erected in his honor..."
"...Harrison's son John Scott Harrison served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio between 1853 and 1857. Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, was the 23rd president, from 1889 to 1893, making them the only grandparent–grandchild pair of presidents..."
SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'William Henry Harrison', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 January 2012, 15:30 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Henry_Harrison&ol...> [accessed 14 January 2012]
"...William Henry Harrison was an American military leader, politician, the ninth President of the United States, and the first President to die in office. The oldest President elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, Harrison had served 30 days in office, still the shortest tenure in United States presidential history, before his death in April 1841. His death created a brief constitutional crisis, but ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment.
Before election as President, Harrison served as the first Governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. Representative and Senator from Ohio. Harrison originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought the war in his region to a successful conclusion.
After the war Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to United States Congress and in 1824 to the Senate, where he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia he lectured Simon Bolivar on the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio, where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before accepting his second presidential nomination in 1840.
His grandson Benjamin Harrison was elected president in 1888 and was the 23rd president.
"Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle a pension of two thousand a year on him, and my word for it," a Democratic newspaper foolishly gibed, "he will sit ... by the side of a 'sea coal' fire, and study moral philosophy. " The Whigs, seizing on this political misstep, in 1840 presented their candidate William Henry Harrison as a simple frontier Indian fighter, living in a log cabin and drinking cider, in sharp contrast to an aristocratic champagne-sipping Van Buren.
Harrison was in fact a scion of the Virginia planter aristocracy. He was born at Berkeley in 1773. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond.
Suddenly, that same year, 1791, Harrison switched interests. He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the Regular Army, and headed to the Northwest, where he spent much of his life.
In the campaign against the Indians, Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General "Mad Anthony" Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened most of the Ohio area to settlement. After resigning from the Army in 1798, he became Secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the Territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In 1801 he became Governor of the Indiana Territory, serving 12 years.
His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness. When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements.
The threat against settlers became serious in 1809. An eloquent and energetic chieftain, Tecumseh, with his religious brother, the Prophet, began to strengthen an Indian confederation to prevent further encroachment. In 1811 Harrison received permission to attack the confederacy.
While Tecumseh was away seeking more allies, Harrison led about a thousand men toward the Prophet's town. Suddenly, before dawn on November 7, the Indians attacked his camp on Tippecanoe River. After heavy fighting, Harrison repulsed them, but suffered 190 dead and wounded.
The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison's fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh's confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier.
In the War of 1812 Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh. The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest.
Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840. He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60.
When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed "seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them."
Webster had reason to be pleased, for while Harrison was nationalistic in his outlook, he emphasized in his Inaugural that he would be obedient to the will of the people as expressed through Congress.
But before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died--the first President to die in office--and with him died the Whig program..."
SOURCE: Unknown
William and Anna Harrison had 10 children:
William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States (1841), an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office.
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William Henry Harrison, Sr., 9th president of the USA is our 7th cousin 8 times removed
Janet Milburn
8/8/23
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| 1773 |
February 9, 1773
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Berkeley Plantation, Charles City County, Virginia, Colonial America
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| 1796 |
September 29, 1796
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Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio, United States
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| 1798 |
June 28, 1798
- October 1, 1799
Age 25
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October 28, 1798
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Ft. Washington, now Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
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| 1799 |
March 4, 1799
- May 14, 1800
Age 26
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| 1800 |
September 5, 1800
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Richmond, Virginia, United States
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| 1801 |
January 10, 1801
- September 17, 1812
Age 27
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| 1802 |
September 30, 1802
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Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, United States
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| 1804 |
October 4, 1804
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Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, United States
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