This house in Vincennes, Indiana, was part of an estate called Grouseland. It was built by William Henry Harrison as his home when he was governor of the Indiana Territory. He was a member of the Whig political party with broad experience in both politics and the military, and he was elected president of the United States, despite a campaign by opposing Democrats asserting he would rather “sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider.”
As you can see, he didn’t live in a log cabin, but his own party embraced the idea that he was a man of the people. They made Harrison the Tippecanoe of the campaign slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” He had earned the nickname when, in 1811, he led a force that defeated the Native American chief Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe.
He became the ninth president of the U.S. in 1840, but his time in office didn’t last long. He died only thirty days after his election.
What happened? There are theories …
The day of his inauguration as president was cold and wet, but to prove he really was a man of the people, Harrison refused to wear either coat or hat as he he rode horseback to the outdoor ceremony. He then read an inaugural address that lasted nearly two hours, despite having been edited to reduce its length. These actions have long been felt to be the cause of his death.
But …
Harrison followed up the inauguration by getting back on his horse to ride in the inaugural parade. He then attended three inaugural balls, and he was hardy enough to survive all that. Three weeks later, however, he apparently contracted pneumonia. It worsened and he died, despite (or because of) being treated with opium, castor oil, leeches, and Virginia snakeweed. As a result, his running mate and vice president, John Tyler, became the tenth president of the United States.
But …
A 2014 investigation of Harrison’s death concluded that he didn’t die of pneumonia, after all. Instead, this investigation found he had had a form of typhoid fever, caused by the location of the White House. At the time, it was near a dump filled with sewage.
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That isn’t the only story involving Vincennes and presidents. It turned out that William Henry was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, who became the 23rd president of the United States.
And here’s another one:
Sarah Knox Taylor was born in 1814, two blocks from Grouseland. She was the daughter of a man named Zachary Taylor, and at age 21 in 1835, she married a lieutenant in the U.S. Army named Jefferson Davis.
Unfortunately, Sarah died within six months of her marriage. By doing so, however, she avoided a major conflict of interest.
In 1849, Sarah’s father, Zachary, became the twelfth president of the United States of America. Twelve years later, at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, the man who used to be her husband, Jefferson Davis, became the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.
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Photo by the author.