217 Years and Only Three Generations

Here's an interesting bit of trivia courtesy of The Corner.

As a reader of this Corner pointed out in an email to me yesterday, Harrison Tyler, grandson of President John Tyler, still owns and inhabits President Tyler’s Virginia home, Sherwood Forest Plantation.

Take a moment or two to absorb that. John Tyler, our tenth chief executive, was born in 1790, when George Washington still had nine years to live, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, 36 years each. The Tyler who now lives in the family home is neither President Tyler’s great-great grandson nor his great-grandson but his grandson. In the person of Harrison Tyler, in other words, we Americans are still only a couple of generations removed from the men who founded this Republic.

And how is it that there's a living grandson to the 10th president?:

John Tyler was born in 1790. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, his fourteenth child of fifteen (eight children by his first wife, seven by his second) was born in 1853, when President Tyler was 63. Harrison Tyler, Lyon Tyler’s fifth child of six (three children by each of his two wives) was born in 1928, when Lyon Tyler was 75. And Harrison Tyler, now 79, still inhabits Sherwood Forest Plantation, the Tyler family home.

From grandfather to grandson, 217 years…and counting.

Interesting.