page_title: John Tyler
section_title: Family and personal life
hierarchical_section_title: John Tyler / Family and personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Oil portrait of Letitia Tyler (1790 - 1842), first wife of John Tyler, by an unknown artist; 42” x 36”
context_page_description: John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States from 1841 to 1845 after briefly serving as the tenth vice president in 1841; he was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with President William Henry Harrison. Tyler ascended to the presidency after Harrison's death in April 1841, only a month after the start of the new administration. He was a stalwart supporter and advocate of states' rights, and he adopted nationalistic policies as president only when they did not infringe on the powers of the states. His unexpected rise to the presidency posed a threat to the presidential ambitions of Henry Clay and other politicians, and left Tyler estranged from both major political parties.
  Tyler was born to a prominent Virginia family and became a national figure at a time of political upheaval. In the 1820s, the nation's only political party was the Democratic-Republican Party, and it split into factions. Tyler was initially a Democrat, but he opposed Andrew Jackson during the Nullification Crisis, seeing Jackson's actions as infringing on states' rights, and he criticized Jackson's expansion of executive power during the Bank War.
context_section_description: Tyler fathered more children than any other American president. His first wife was Letitia Christian (November 12, 1790 – September 10, 1842), with whom he had eight children: Mary (1815–1847), Robert (1816–1877), John (1819–1896), Letitia (1821–1907), Elizabeth (1823–1850), Anne (1825–1825), Alice (1827–1854) and Tazewell (1830–1874).
   Tyler's first wife Letitia died of a stroke in the White House in September 1842. His second wife was Julia Gardiner (July 23, 1820 – July 10, 1889), with whom he had seven children: David (1846–1927), John Alexander (1848–1883), Julia (1849–1871), Lachlan (1851–1902), Lyon (1853–1935), Robert Fitzwalter (1856–1927) and Pearl (1860–1947).
  Although Tyler's family was dear to him, during his political rise he was often away from home for extended periods. When Tyler chose not to seek re-election to the House of Representatives in 1821 because of illness, he wrote that he would soon be called upon to educate his growing family. It was difficult to practice law while away in Washington part of the year, and his plantation was more profitable when Tyler was available to manage it himself. By the time he entered the Senate in 1827, he had resigned himself to spending part of the year away from his family. Still, he sought to remain close to his children through letters.
  Tyler was a slaveholder, at one point keeping forty slaves at Greenway. Although he regarded slavery as an evil, and did not attempt to justify it, he never freed any of his slaves. Tyler considered slavery a part of states' rights, and therefore the federal government lacked the authority to abolish it. The living conditions of his slaves are not well documented, but historians surmise that he cared for their well-being and abstained from physical violence against them. In December 1841, Tyler was attacked by abolitionist publisher Joshua Leavitt, with the unsubstantiated allegation that Tyler had fathered several sons with his slaves, and later sold them. A number of African American families today maintain a belief in their descent from Tyler, but there is no evidence of such genealogy.
  As of August 2019, Tyler has two living grandsons through his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler, making him the earliest former president with living grandchildren. Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. was born in 1924, and Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928. Lyon Tyler Jr. resides in Franklin, Tennessee, and Harrison Tyler maintains the family home, Sherwood Forest Plantation, in Charles City County, Virginia.
caption: An oil portrait of Tyler's first wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, by an unknown artist
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