1. James Garfield was ambidextrous, and he knew both Latin and Ancient Greek.
Portrait of James A. Garfield - 20th President
National Portrait Gallery -Washington, DC
Photo taken by Robert Fessler
2. The most Presidents were born in October. What about February? Its prominence comes from the fact that before we celebrated Presidents Day, we celebrated George Washington Day on Febrary 22nd and Abraham Lincoln Day on February 12th. Six Presidents were born in October. Five were born in August and November. The two other Presidents born in February were Willaim Henry Harrison and...Ronald Reagan.
3. The shortest President was James Madison at five feet four, or slightly more, inches tall. There were seven Presidents who were less than five feet, eight inches. In reverse order of height, they were:
James Madison 5'4" fourth President
John Adams 5'6" second President
Martin Van Buren 5'6" eighth President
Benjamin Harrison 5'6" twenty-third President
John Quincy Adams 5'7" sixth President
Ulysses S. Grant 5'7" eighteenth President
William McKinley 5'7" twenty-fifth President
4. Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison.
5. Andrew Johnson was elected Senator from his home state of Tennessee several years after he finished serving the second term of Abraham Lincoln as President. Like Lincoln, he was a man of humble origins. He was a tailor by profession, and his wife taught him to read. Many Southerners considered him a traitor because he supported the Union during the Civil War, but many Northerners distrusted him because he was from the South.
6. Two... Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth President and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second President.
7. Hannibal Hamlin was Lincoln's first Vice President. He was from Maine.
The Republican Party Banner for 1860. From the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. See text below.
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| Text from the National Portrait Gallery for the above picture. |
8. Elbridge Gerry was Vice President during Madison's second term. The word 'Gerrymander' came from his name because he redistricted areas in Massachusetts to the benefit of individuals he supported politically. Cartoonists had fun drawing the shape of a new district he had created, saying it looking like a Gerrymander, a reference to the shape and appearance of a salamander.
9. Ulysses S. Grant submitted his resignation to the Secretary of War in Franklin Pierce's administration. The man holding that office was Jefferson Davis, future President of the Confederate States of America! Needless to say, Jefferson Davis would have benefited much more if Grant had submitted his resignation to him in the course of the Civil War. Actually at the start of his career, Grant did not appear suited for a military life. He attended the military academy at West Point and was a classmate of William Tecumseh Sherman and Simon Bolivar Buckner of Kentucky. The later was the Confederate general who surrendered to Grant at Fort Donalson and where Grant picked up his new nickname of 'Unconditional Surrender'. An interesting story is that at the time that Grant had resigned from the army in 1854, he didn't have enough money to pay his entire way home. So, guess who he had borrowed from...Simon Bolivar Buckner! At the time Buckner surrendered, Grant apparently paid his financial debt!
Grant's main reason for attending West Point had been more to get a good education for free rather than for any other reason. He did not enjoy taking life in any form, including that of animals: so he didn't go hunting like other fellows of his age. As a young officer, he became a heavy drinker or at least a drinker who couldn't hold his liquor very well. While a young officer, he had been assigned to a couple of posts in the far West, and seemed so unsuited for a military career, at least in the opinion of his commanding officer, that he was encouraged to resign...which he did...when Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War...for the United States of America!
10. The wife of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President who served in several posts overseas. He met his wife in England where she had been born. Ironically, the United States had quite recently been at war with England, and his marriage was destined to be rather stormy at times, too! His wife's name was Louisa Catherine Adams.
11. More Presidents were affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was an offshoot of the Anglican Church or the Church of England. When the United States gained its independence, the Americans transformed the Anglican Church into the Episcopal Church in much the same way that Henry the Eighth established the Anglican Church to replace the Catholic Chuch in England...although for different reasons. So, the majority of the early American colonists who were from England may have originally been Anglicans, especially in the South. Those people then became Episcopalians. About eleven Presidents were Episcopalians...'about' is used here because a President's true religious beliefs were not always possible to ascertain. Also, his beliefs could change in the course of his lifetime. Prebyterians made up the second largest group of Presidents. Apparently, some of them considered themselves 'predestined' to serve their country in the role of President, in keeping with the tenets of their religion. Seven Presidents were Presbyterians. So, over a third of our Presidents were Episcopalians or Presbyterians. Although more people in the United States belong to the Catholic Church than to any other religious group, only one President, John F. Kennedy, was a Catholic.
12. Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President, was not asked to run by the Whig Party after he completed serving the term of Zachary Taylor who died in office. However, a 'third party' group did ask him to run in the election of 1856 under their banner. They were opposed to allowing any more immigrants to enter the United States, and were also anti-Catholic. They were known as the 'Know-Nothing Party'. A little before running, he joined a group called the 'Order of the Star-Spangled Banner' that conducted some of their secret rites in his home. He was not successful in his attempt to get elected. Instead, James Buchanan won the election of 1856.
13. The first Vice President to complete the term of a President who died in office was John Tyler from Charles County, Virginia. He replaced William Henry Harrison, the ninth President, who also was from Charles County, Virginia. 'The more things change, the more they stay the same!'
14. There were 9 Vice Presidents who replaced a President before the end of his term. They were:
1. John Tyler---10th President
2. Millard Fillmore---13th President
3. Andrew Johnson---17th President
4. Chester A. Arthur---21st President
5. Theodore Roosevelt---26th President
6. Calvin Coolidge---30th President
7. Harry S. Truman---33rd President
8. Lyndon B. Johnson---36th President
9. Gerald Ford---38th President
15. In addition to the Vice Presidents who replaced Presidents before the end of their terms, there were four more Vice Presidents who became President later on. They were:
1. John Adams---2nd President
2. Thomas Jefferson---3rd President
3. Martin Van Buren---8th President
4. George H. W. Bush---41st President
So there were a total of 13 Vice Presidents who became Presidents.
16. The most common first name for the Presidents is 'James'. Six Presidents had that name. James 'Jimmy' Earl Carter was the last President with that name. Four Presidents were named John, and four were named William, the second most common names.
17. Mrs. Eaton was the wife of a cabinent member in Andrew Jackson's administration. Unfortunately, many of the other wives of cabinet officials considered her to be a women of questionable repute and refused to associate with her. John Calhoun who had realistic aspirations to succeed Jackson as President was Vice President in his first administration. However, he ruined his chances to get the support of Jackson after he calumnied Mrs. Eaton himself. That incident caused Jackson to demand the resignations of all the administration officials, including John Calhoun. In that way, Jackson was able to put an end to all the malicious gossip about Mrs. Eaton. That Jackson would take such drastic measures may have stemmed from the way his own wife had been maligned because she may have married Jackson before her divorce from her previous husband had become final. Consequently, Martin Van Buren was named Vice President in Jackson's second administration and went on to become President. Actually, John Calhoun had been waiting in the wings for some time. He had also been Vice President under John Quincy Adams, just prior to Jackson's administration.
18. Franklin Pierce was from New England but was known to be sympathetic to southern views prior to the Civil War. The man he recommended to run in his stead for President of the United States was Jefferson Davis, who had been Secretary of War in Pierce's cabinet.
19. There were eight Presidents from Virginia, known as the "Mother of Presidents'. Some of those men went to live in other states later in their lives. The Presidents born in Virginia were:
1. George Washington---1st President
2. Thomas Jefferson---3rd President
3. James Madison---4th President
4. James Monroe---5th President
5. William Henry Harrison---9th President
6. John Tyler---10th President
7. Zachary Tayor---12th President
8. Woodrow Wilson---28th President
So, of the first 12 Presidents, over half of them came from Virginia. But from that point on, only one President was born in Virginia.
20. Three Presidents attended William and Mary named after the King and Queen of England. One of them wrote the Declaration of Independence. One of them dropped out to fight in the the Revolutionary War. The last one was the first Vice President to succeed a President who did not complete his mandated term in office. They were Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Tyler.
21. Seven Presidents were born in Ohio. Much like Virginia's run on the Presidency, there was a time when over half the Presidents came from Ohio...That was the period from Grant's administration through Harding's administration. And like Virginia, Ohio had a dry spell afterwards. The Presidents from Ohio were:
1. Ulysses S. Grant 18th President
2. Rutherford B. Hayes 19th President
3. James A. Garfield 20th President
4. Benjamin Harrison 23rd President
5. William McKinley 25th President
6. William Howard Taft 27th President
7. Warren G. Harding 29th President
22. William Howard Taft, the 27th President. He was appointed Chief Justice eight years after leaving the White House by Warren G. Harding in 1921.
23. George W. Bush, the 43rd President, obtained his first college degree from Yale Univeristy. He later went to Harvard and received a Master's Degree in Business.
24. Harry S. Truman was the last President who did not obtain a Bachelor's degree from a 4-year college. However, he did enroll at the Kansas City Law School for two years.
25. The tallest President was Abraham Lincoln at 6 feet 4 inches. There were a total of 21 Presidents who were six feet or more in height. They were, with their approximate heights:
1. George Washington 1st President 6'2"
2. Thomas Jefferson 3rd President 6'2"
3. James Monroe 5th President 6'
4. Andrew Jackson 7th President 6'
5. John Tyler 10th President 6'
6. Millard Fillmore 13th President 6'
7. James Buchanan 15th President 6'
8. Abraham Lincoln 16th President 6'4"
9. James Garfield 20th President 6'
10. Chester A. Arthur 21st President 6'2"
11. William Howard Taft 27th President 6'2"
12. Warren G. Harding 29th President 6'
13. Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President 6'1"
14. John F. Kennedy 35th President 6'
15. Lyndon B. Johnson 36th President 6'3"
16. Gerald R. Ford 38th President 6'
17. Ronald Reagan 40th President 6'1"
18. George H. W. Bush 41th President 6'2"
19. William J. Clinton 42nd President 6'2"
20. George W. Bush 43rd President 6'
21. Barack Obama 44th President 6'1"
26. Martin Van Buren, the 8th President of the United States, was the first President to be born after the former colonies became free and independent. All previous Presidents had been born prior to 1776. Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, after the Battle of Yorktown, the decisive military victory of the former colonies over England.
27. When Lucy Ware Webb was sixteen, her mother sent her off to one of the first colleges chartered for women. She went to the Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati, Ohio. She became Lucy Ware Webb Hayes when she married Rutherford B. Hayes on December 30, 1852. He was the 19th President and served from 1877 to 1881.
28. Dwight D. Eisenhower played semi-pro baseball under an assumed name so that he would not be ineligible to play baseball in college.
29. James A. Garfield, the 20th President, was probably the last President born in a log cabin. He was born in Ohio in 1831.
30. Some people accused Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President, of not being a U. S. citizen. They claimed he was born in Canada where his father had been a preacher. However, his father had been a pastor who preached in both the United States and Canada. His place of birth is recorded as being North Fairfield, Vermont...U. S. A.! Nevertheless, some people persisted in claiming that it was really Chester's brother who was born in North Fairfield. I guess it doesn't matter any more. Or should I say it's too late to do anything about it.
31. This question refers to the mid-1850's, not the 1950's! Chester A. Arthur, who later became the 21st President, defended a 'Negro' lady, Elizabeth Jennings, a public school teacher. She had been put off a New York streetcar in 1854 that was reserved for whites. He won the case and eventually gained equal rights for all 'Negroes' on New York's streetcars.
32. The African-American who received 8 votes at the Republican convention of 1880 to be theVice Presidential candidate was Blanche K. Bruce. It is a rather interesting name at that. He was a Senator from Mississippi and was the first person of color to receive any votes at a Presidential convention. Another noteworthy fact is that the convention was held in Chicago, a home of Barack Obama.
33. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President, was born on July 4, 1872. No other President was born on July 4th.
34. Three Presidents died on July 4th. Most significantly, Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence was one of them. He died on July 4, 1826 exactly 50 years after that document was signed. John Adams died the very same day. He, too, had been asked to help write the Declaration of Independence, but he deferred to Jefferson for the most part. James Monroe died on July 4, 1831.
35. Elizabeth Monroe, wife of James Monroe, paid a visit to Madame de Lafayette in the Bastille in Paris. Madame de Lafayette had been sentenced to be guillotined and was waiting to be executed there. At the time in 1795, James Monroe was the American Minister or Ambassador to France, and he didn't want to damage Franco-American relations by appearing to unduly interfere in French politics which were very volatile then. The French had just been through the Reign of Terror in the course of the French Revolution which was more a civil and class war than the American Revolution had been. James Monroe was quite attracted to French culture, and more importantly, General de Lafayette had helped James Monroe learn French when they were together at Valley Forge. So, James Monroe sent his wife who was quite popular in Paris, and was known as "la belle americaine", to visit Madame de Lafayette in order to prevent her from being executed. It worked. She was released and went to join her husband in prison in Austria until he was released.
36. Woodrow Wilson was the only President to actually earn a Ph.D. Before becoming President, he taught at Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins, Connecticut Wesleyan, and Princeton.
37. The President who declined an honorary degree from Harvard was Grover Cleveland. Although his father and older brothers attended college, Grover Cleveland was unable to begin due to the death of his father and the resulting insufficient financial resources in the family. So, President Cleveland no doubt sincerely believed that he didn't deserve a degree, even an honorary one. He was a guest at Harvard in 1886 when the university celebrated the 250th anniversary of its founding.
38. The youngest First Lady was Frances Folsum. It's lucky that there was no electronic media when she married Glover Cleveland after he had been elected President. He was nearly fifty, and she was only twenty-one, going on twenty-two! In addition, he had actually helped to raise her as his ward after her father died when he was killed by a runaway team of horses. Mr. Folsum had been Grover Cleveland's law partner. Frances was an only child. Grover Cleveland had taken good care of her and had sent her to Wells College in New York. She was a senior there during his first year as President.
39. Grover Cleveland was a secondary school dropout even though his father had received an excellent formal education. The reason for leaving school early was that Grover's father died before Grover had the opportunity to finish secondary school or to attend college. Grover had to quit his studies so he could help support the family. Grover Cleveland had intended to enter Hamilton College from which one of his brothers had already graduated. Does anyone remember his brother's name? or what he did after he obtained his degree?
40. Cleveland, Ohio! Grover Cleveland intended to go to Cleveland. When Grover Cleveland began to work in New York state, his first job was as a clerk in a country store where he earned 50 dollars a year in addition to his board and room, such as they might have been. However, eventually, he planned to go to Cleveland, Ohio, but he stopped on his way to Cleveland to visit his uncle near Buffalo, New York. He changed his mind when his uncle, who was a properous farmer, convinced Grover to stay and work for him. The rest is history...Grover later became mayor of Buffalo (on January 2, 1882), then governor of New York, and finally President of the the United States...two times!
41. James Madison did not attend William and Mary, but went to Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey) instead, because his family thought William and Mary was too liberal!
42. Seven Presidents (out of 44) never even entered high school! Some of them had little or no formal primary school education. They were George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson.
Please refer to Questions about the Presidents and First Ladies.
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