The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1889-03-09

! stable and one a tanner Benjamin HARRISON
/ father of William Henry Harrison, was the
! first statesman of the list His great grandson
/ of ne same namo left home 10 go 10 college,
! and Immediately on matriculation took up the
; study of law In thus early turning to the
| Inv hc followed the example set by one hall
| of his predecessors Four of the presidents
were i'm curly manhood teachers, three sol
dicr,. two taliur,, one farm hand and one "a
/ tanner When elected 10 the presidency
seventeen were lawyers two farmers on
/ plnntrr-. tWp statesmen and two soldiers,
Gen Harrison /, tine fourteenth lawyer
prr-i Iaut. "a, be- /, the fourteenth Of pure
! AuaI..Snxon blood. Notwithstanding the
cosmopolitan nature OF the population OF
Amrriuu. only one president has had IN his
vein, maternal blood that wasu not drawuirom
n Great Britain ancestry, The one exception
/, Van Buren, whose parents were both Dutch.
Monroe. Grant and Hayes were Scotch,
Jackson, Pulk. buchanan and Arthur, Scotch
Irish. and all the others of direct English
descent The ancestry Of President Harrison
Is tracrahlc further back than that of any
other president save Hayes, For six prior
generations the families of both have a clearly
recorded hytor, Clevelands ancestry and
/
corded for four prior generations; none Of
the others extend, beyond three, aud IN the
case, of several presidents even grandlathcra
are with difficulty searched out 10y the his
tOrianS
benjamin Harrison is the fifteenth presl'
dent 10 go into history with single baptN-
nal name He is the fifth Presbyterian, max
inl his church uutnumber all others save the
Episcopnians, who have had nine. The
Mcthodisis are third with four, the COngre-
gationalistS fifth with two, while the Re
formed Dutch and Disciples claim one each.
Jefferson wa, uOn-bellevcr
Gen. Harr,Dn's grandfather and Tyler,
elected on the same ticket, were both natives
of Charles city county, Va WestmOreland
county. same state, has produced two prcsi-
dents, Washington and Monroe. The two
Adamsrs were born in the same town.
The man today maugurated is the first
president born in August. Through some
strange dispensatiou of the tates only two
prc,ideul, were born in the summer months.
March and April claim four each; February,
October aud November three each, Decem-
Der, two. january and September, one each,
July. one lIohn Quincy Adams, and August,
one 03 HARRISON May and June have rs
vet no presidents TO their credit.
A queer tendency of presidents to die in
July cannot bc easily explained, for the death
rate Of this month Is approximately that OF
any other month in the calendar, and for per
sons well advanced in years is even lower.
Yet seven presidents have died in July and
one Garfield was aSsiSSlnated in the same
month. -Four died in June thus placing
against these two months the demise of II ma
iority of the presidents who have passed
away.
A common notion concerning presidents Is
that the abors and harassments of their
Office, of which Gen Harrison has spoken,
the consuming effect of ambition and the
nervous and intellectual strain of party lead
ership and campaign turmoil, must inevitably
tend TO shorten mems lives. This theory Is
not strikingly borne out 10y the facts The
table of life expectation used by Insurance
COMPANIES shows, in round numbers, that in
the course of nature the presidents should
have lived to an average of 1871 years. As a
matter of fact they did live to the average
ace of 20 wears, despite the fact that two were
assas,inated, thus deprivng one, Lincoln, OF
- years of his expectation, and the other,
Garfield, of 20 years. Omltting these short
ened averages, the figures given herewith
show that the remaining presidents have
lived within few months of the average
years allotted men of their age: