Harrison Ruffin Tyler, the grandson of President John Tyler, has passed away at the age of 96.
His death marks the end of a living link to an 19th-century U.S. presidency and a person of intrigue for many political historians.
Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and the grandson of John Tyler, who served as the 10th president of the United States from 1841 to 1845.
His mother, Susan Ruffin Tyler, descended directly from Pocahontas.
According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Harrison died of dementia over the Memorial Day weekend in his Virginia nursing home.
The last living grandson of President John Tyler has died.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928 and died in 2025.
His grandfather, the 10th President of the United States, was born in 1790 and died in 1862. pic.twitter.com/MIBD1u71EM
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) May 28, 2025
Tyler was born on November 9, 1928. His father, Lyon Sr., was 75 at the time. Lyon Sr. had been born when President John Tyler was 63.
The former president, who died in 1862, had 15 children of his own.
He studied at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, then went on to William & Mary and Virginia Tech. In 1968, he co-founded ChemTreat, a water treatment company that served major clients like Kraft and Philip Morris.
Tyler married Frances Payne Bouknight Tyler in 1957. They had three children and eight grandchildren before her death in 2019.
In 1975, Harrison bought and restored Sherwood Forest Plantation, his grandfather’s former home, and opened it to the public. He also preserved Fort Pocahontas, a Civil War site built by Black Union soldiers, in 1996.
In 2001, he donated thousands of documents, books, and $5 million to William & Mary’s history department. The school renamed the department after him in 2021.
John Tyler, born in 1790 shortly after George Washington’s inauguration, grew up on a Virginia plantation.
He became president in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died just 31 days into office — the first vice president to assume the presidency that way.
He was a lifelong slaveowner and a champion of states’ rights, although died just one year after the outbreak of the American Civil War.
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