Tag Archives: Family history

The 19th century US president with grandchild alive in 2024

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One of my weekly pleasures is reading Jonn Elledge’s latest Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything. It’s a mix of political commentary, transport and geographical trivia. In short, it could have been made for me.

A recent edition contained just the kind of revelation that I love, and on the off chance that any of my readers don’t follow Jonn’s Substack I thought I’d reshare it. John Tyler, president of the United States from 1841 to 1845, has a grandchild still alive in 2024. (As of this January.)

This is Jonn’s version of the story:

In 1844, following the death of first wife, Tyler secretly married a woman 30 years his junior, the 24 year old Julia Gardiner. They had seven children, one of whom, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, would follow in his dad’s footsteps by marrying a second wife, Sue Ruffin, nearly 35 years his junior. One of their sons, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr, survived until 2020, when he died aged 95. Another, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, born in 1928, was reported to be still going as recently as January. So yes, it is entirely possible to be alive in the 21st century, and have a grandfather born in the 18th. Cool.

I found this amazing.

I’ve always cherished memories of my Victorian grandmother, born on Lenin’s 21st birthday in 1891, but this is in a different league. Not long ago, I tried to establish whether there had been anyone born before Nan was born in April 1891 who was still alive when my son Owen was born in 2008. Such a person would have been over 117 in 2008 for this to have happened. People have lived longer than that, but my Googling academic research suggests that their lifespan didn’t match the 1891-2008 period. The closest match was Emiliano Mercado del Toro, who lived from August 1891 to January 2007. (No man has lived beyond 116 years; the oldest woman, Jeane Calment, reached 122.)

I’m looking forward to Jonn’s latest gems in this week’s newsletter! It’s well worth subscribing.

No longer sharing my thoughts with my dad…

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When I started blogging 18 years ago I chose a tagline: ‘Rob Skinner shares his thoughts with the world’. Then I reflected that seemed rather boastful – the world wouldn’t care what I thought. So I added a tongue in cheek qualification. The final line read, ‘Rob Skinner shares his thoughts with the world – or his dad’.

It proved a fair reflection of my limited audience. Dad and I often discussed my blogposts, and I was delighted when he started his own blog as the first Covid-19 lockdown began in 2020. (We later turned that into a Kindle book, as the BBC reported.) One of his own last blogposts, the month before he died, about cinema, was prompted by my reflections on childhood cinemas.

After Dad died last February, I occasionally thought the old tagline was poignant rather than apt. But I was reluctant to remove it. But now, 11 months after Dad passed away, and a year after that father and son blogging double act, seems the right time to do so.

Dad (Bob Skinner) in 2005 outside the house he moved to when war broke out in 1939

Like most people who have lost a parent, I miss the chance to ask Dad a question about a hundred and one things. For example, when I blogged recently (Echoes of 1939) about his evacuation from London to stay with his aunt in Splott, Cardiff, at the outbreak of the second world war, I realised I had no idea how he got to Cardiff. Train? Coach? Alone or with his mother? Sadly, I will never know. But I have a lifetime of memories, not to mention Dad’s written memories and archives.

PS: for the record, a screenshot of this post with the old tagline, before I retire it.

Postscript

Ahzio’s lovely comment on this post – that I should keep the tagline mentioning my father – prompted me to change it to a dedication to both Dad and Mum, former journalists who inspired my love of writing.