Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Grandson of the 10th President, Is Dead at 96
He was the last of three generations spanning nearly the entire history of the United States: When his grandfather was born, George Washington had just become president.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler, the last surviving grandson of John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, who was born just after George Washington became president 236 years ago and who served in the White House from 1841 to 1845, died on Sunday at his home in Richmond, Va. He was 96.
His death was confirmed by Annique Dunning, the executive director of Sherwood Forest Plantation, a private foundation established by the Tyler family.
Mr. Tyler suffered a series of small strokes starting in 2012 and was later diagnosed with dementia. In recent years, his son William Bouknight Tyler oversaw the James River plantation that had been his family’s ancestral home.
Mr. Tyler, a retired businessman, and his older brother, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., who died at age 95 in 2020, were sons of Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr. (1853-1935), a longtime president of the College of William & Mary. Their grandfather was the U.S. president who pushed for the annexation of Texas as American expansion moved west, but he is perhaps best known for the Whig Party’s memorable 1840 presidential campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”
In a remarkable instance of successive longevities and late-in-life paternities, the Tyler family produced a genealogical marvel, if not a singularity: three generations that spanned nearly the entire history of the American experience.