Grandson of 10th U.S. president, who served from 1841-1845
Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. — the older of two surviving grandsons of the 10th president of the United States, John Tyler, and part of a genealogical marvel that in just three generations spanned almost the entire history of the United States — died on Sept. 26 in Franklin, Tennessee. He was 95.
His daughter, Susan Selina Pope Tyler, said his death, at Williamson Medical Center, was caused by Alzheimer’s disease. He lived in Franklin.
Tyler, a lawyer and historian, and his 91-year-old brother, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, were the last surviving sons of Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr. (1853-1935), a longtime president of the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
Lyon Tyler Sr.’s father, who was born just after George Washington became president 231 years ago and who served in the White House from 1841 to 1845, was the president who annexed Texas as the 28th state as America expanded west. But he might be better known for the Whig Party’s catchy 1840 presidential campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”
The Tyler family was a remarkable case of welldocumented successive longevities and late-in-life paternities; the combined life-span of President Tyler and his distinguished son alone was 152 years.
When the website mentalfloss.com reported in 2012 that two grandsons of President Tyler were still alive, and that three generations of Tylers spanned, at the time, 222 years, dating to the early days of the Republic, the news went viral.
New York magazine called it “an amazing, seemingly impossible piece of American trivia.” As Yahoo, The Huffington Post, Fox News and Politico scrambled for inand terviews, the grandsons related oft-told family stories about Patrick Henry, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, the American Revolution, the Civil War and their grandfather, the president.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., in a talk to the Daughters of the American Revolution in 2013 in Dyersburg, Tennessee, went back even further: to his great-grandfather, John Tyler Sr., (1747-1813), who served in the Continental Army, became governor of Virginia and had eight children, including the future president.
“John Tyler’s father, also named John, was Thomas Jefferson’s roommate at the College of William & Mary,” Lyon Tyler said. “Jefferson and John Tyler Sr. shared the same political views, played their fiddles together in college and remained lifelong friends.”
His son, the future president, was born in 1790, less than a year after Washington’s first inauguration. He became a governor of Virginia and a U.S. representative and senator.
In the election of 1840, the Whig Party selected William Henry Harrison as its presidential candidate and Tyler as his running mate.
Harrison, a former governor of the Indiana Territory U.S. senator from Ohio, had led the American forces that crushed Native Americans at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana in 1811.
Harrison and Tyler won, but a month after being sworn in on March 4, 1841, Harrison died of pneumonia. Tyler became the first vice president to succeed a deceased president.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. was born on Jan. 3, 1925.
After graduating from William & Mary, he earned a law degree at the University of Virginia and practiced law.
He received a doctorate in history from Duke University in
1967 and then taught history at the University of Richmond, the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel. He married Lucy Jane Pope in 1958. Susan Tyler is their daughter. His wife died in 2001.
His daughter and his brother are his only immediate survivors.
Tyler Jr.