The last living grandson of President John Tyler — who left the White House in 1845 — has died.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler died Sunday at 96, according to Annique Dunning, executive director of Sherwood Forest, the Virginia property that members of the Tyler family have called home since the end of its patriarch's presidency. Tyler had suffered strokes in recent years and died of natural causes, she said.
Tyler led a successful career as a chemical engineer before turning his attention — and newfound wealth — to preserving historical sites.
"His love of history and his birthplace, Charles City County, VA, led him to preserve both Sherwood Forest, President Tyler's home, and Fort Pocahontas, a Civil War fortification nearby," Dunning told NPR over email. "He will be remembered for his considerable charm, generosity and unfailing good humor by all who knew him."
In interviews over the years, Tyler said he didn't pay much attention to his lineage when he was younger.
"I grew up during World War II, and surviving the war and the shortages was what was on everybody's mind," he told Subaru Drive Magazine in 2002. "Being related to a president was never a thought."
As he got older, however, it became a great source of pride — and amusement.
"When you talk about my grandfather born in the 1700s, there is a disconnect there," he told a Richmond CBS affiliate in 2012, during a wave of media coverage. "It is somewhat incredulous because of the time frame."
The Tyler family tree
John Tyler was the 10th president of the U.S., and the first vice president to ascend to the presidency.
He took office in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died just a month into his term. Tyler's four years in office were largely defined by his opposition to his own Whig Party, his controversial annexation of Texas and staunch support of states' rights — and, later, the Confederacy.
Tyler had eight children with his first wife, Letitia, who died of a stroke in 1842. Two years later, he married Julia Gardiner, a New York socialite 30 years his junior.
While Gardiner initially turned down his advances, she "literally swooned into President Tyler's arms after witnessing her father's death in an explosion," according to the National First Ladies Library & Museum. They had been cruising the Potomac River on a new naval warship when a gun exploded, killing six people, including cabinet secretaries and Gardiner's father.
At the end of his term, Tyler and Gardiner moved from the White House to Sherwood Forest, about 27 miles southeast of Richmond. They had a total of seven children before his death at age 71 in 1862.
Their third-youngest, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, was born in 1853 — when his dad was 63. After the death of his first wife, Lyon Gardiner Tyler went on to marry Sue Ruffin, who was 35 years his junior and had her own notable family history: She was a direct descendant of Pocahontas and Edmund Ruffin, a prominent planter, Virginia state senator and early advocate for secession.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler — their second son — was born in 1928. His dad was 75 at the time.
Tyler made his name in chemical engineering
Tyler showed promise in mathematics from a young age. At 16, he won a scholarship to the College of William & Mary, where his dad had served as president.
Despite Tyler's prominent family heritage, he had a modest upbringing. His son, William, told the Washington Post in 2020, because the late president's wealth was spread thin among his numerous heirs, and most of Tyler's father's wealth was "tied up in a vast book collection" that he donated to William & Mary. His college tuition was mysteriously paid by Lady Astor, whom the family had never met.
Tyler graduated with a chemistry degree in 1949, then studied chemical engineering at Virginia Tech. In 1968 he co-founded ChemTreat, an industrial water treatment company whose clients eventually included Kraft Foods, Philip Morris and the Ford Motor Company. It boasted revenues of $200 million in the fiscal year before it was acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2007.
Tyler told Virginia Tech Magazine in 2007 that he and co-founder William Simmons had three goals: "sell a product that works, hire good employees, and take care of those employees." They made the company an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1989, and their employees gained controlling interest when they retired in 2000.
Tyler's "accomplishments in business changed the lives of countless employees of ChemTreat," Dunning told NPR.
Tyler's preservation and philanthropic work
Tyler and his wife, Francis Payne Bouknight Tyler, acquired Sherwood Forest from cousins in 1975, according to Dunning. By that point it was a "shadow of its former self," according to a database from the American Aristocracy website.
The president's widow, Julia, fled the property during the Civil War and returned afterward to find it ransacked by Union troops and formerly enslaved people, including some the Tyler family had owned. There were 43 enslaved workers on the property as of 1860, according to Sherwood Forest.
After acquiring it in the 1970s, Tyler and his wife set about restoring the 50-acre property (about half of which is open for public tours), referring to letters and books his grandmother had used to decorate it originally. Sherwood Forest, which is now a national historic landmark, boasts the longest frame house in America, as well as a ghost named the Gray Lady.
In 1996, Tyler purchased Fort Pocahontas, a Civil War fortification a few miles from Sherwood Forest. The National Register of Historic Places says the site was "virtually untouched" for over a century until Tyler bought it. It opens to the public for a reenactment one weekend every June.
"Due to his vision, dedication, and generous support, efforts to preserve and interpret the fort continue today through Fort Pocahontas LTD, a private foundation of the Tyler family," it added.
Tyler and his wife also donated $5 million to establish an endowment for the College of William & Mary's history department in 2001, in memory of his father. But, citing "Lyon Gardiner Tyler's views on the Confederacy and on slavery," the department was renamed in honor of Tyler himself in 2021.
It says his donation underwrites research and guest lectures on a wide range of subjects, including Jewish history, imperialism, the Cold War and the histories of slavery, racism and discrimination.
"The extraordinary generosity of Harrison Ruffin Tyler — whose gift came with no limitations on the scholarly activity it would make possible — continues to bear good fruit," the department says.
Tyler's family ties
Tyler acknowledged his grandfather's complicated legacy, but also defended it. He said in a 2012 interview that Tyler is not often recognized for organizing a Peace Conference in Washington in 1861 to try to avert a civil war. When that effort failed, he was elected to the Confederate Congress but died before his term began.
"He was not a traitor to his country," he separately told WTVR, the CBS station, that year. "John Tyler did try to promote peace wherever he could."
He laughed off the idea of following in his family's tradition of fathering children later in life, saying, "We're not going that route again."
Tyler's wife, Frances Payne Bouknight Tyler, died in 2019. His brother, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., died in 2020, making him the president's last surviving grandson.
Harrison Ruffin Tyler is survived by three children and eight grandchildren, according to Dunning, who says Sherwood Forest will remain in the family.
"Sherwood Forest is a private foundation of the Tyler family," she said. "Nothing will be changing about that."
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