Dem
47
GOP
53
On Sunday, an era finally came to a close. It's an era that you might have expected to have ended oh, say, 100 years ago, but not so much. For those not already in the know, we are speaking of the death of Harrison Ruffin Tyler.
Tyler had an extremely successful career as a businessman and engineer, but this is not why he was famous. No, the key to his fame was the last name "Tyler," which he got from his father, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and which Lyon got from HIS father, John Tyler. That is the same John Tyler who was born in 1790, who served as President of the United States from 1841-45 (after William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison keeled over), and who died in 1862, shortly after being elected to the Confederate Congress.
In other words, until Sunday, the grandson of a man born while George Washington was president, who served himself as president two decades before the Civil War, and who died of old age during the Civil War, still walked among us. That was made possible by John Tyler being a dirty old man who continued to have kids well into his senior years (15 in total; Lyon was born in 1853, when John was 63), and then Lyon picking up the family habit, and also being a dirty old man who continued to have kids into his senior years (6 in total; Harrison was born in 1928, when Lyon was 75). Obviously, Harrison Tyler never met his grandfather, having missed the opportunity by a mere 66 years.
We should probably also note that the "Ruffin" in Harrison Tyler's name comes from his great-grandfather Edmund. Edmund Ruffin was a white supremacist and pro-Confederate zealot who is best known for being given the honor of ordering the firing of the first shot at Fort Sumter. He was so disappointed when the South lost the Civil War that he took his own life (there are those who call it the "last shot" of the Civil War). Edmund Ruffin, who had 11 kids, was not related to John Tyler; that lineage comes from Harrison's mother. It would seem that women on both sides of Harrison's family had a taste for racists with very active libidos.
Naturally, this is not all that important in the scheme of things, but we still thought we should note it. Oh, and Harrison, who had only three kids, the last when he was 32, did not inherit his forebears' habit in that area. Or the other habit, for that matter. Anyhow, vaya con dios, Harrison Tyler. (Z)