Does anyone know whether any of the U.S. presidents were born outside the confines of holy matrimony ? If so, who ?
I’m going to take a wild leap here and assume that you actually wanted this thread in General Questions, Squink. So off it goes.
(And, off the top of my head, I don’t know of any Presidents whose parents’ weren’t married, though one could speculate on Andrew Jackson given how in question the circumstances of his birth were.)
The circumstance surronding the birth of our current president, WJC, have led some to speculate but I guess only his mother knew for sure and she is not talking.
According to Facts About the Presidents by Joseph Nathan Kane, Andrew Jackson (like Rutherford B. Hayes) was “born posthumously.” That means that the father died before the son was born. And in Jackson’s case, Kane notes that he was the first President whose birthplace was in dispute. A volume Cecil cites, Rumor!, notes that a fund of lies was concocted by the campaign staff of Jackson’s opponent in 1832, including that Jackson’s father was a “Mulatto man.” Obviously, in that era, campaign staffs were certainly not fettered by any standard of decency when writing about the opponent, even if they had to make up facts to do it.
You might be mis-remebering that Abraham Lincoln’s birth mother (Lucy Hanks) was born outside of wedlock.
I seem to recall something about James Fremont’s birth status being somewhat questionsable, but he only ran for president and lost (1860? I’m not sure).
Fremont’s parents were not married. They eloped, but never officially got married before Fremont was born in 1813. His father, who didn’t spell his name with a T at the end, died in 1818.
Fremont himself later eloped with his wife, but they actually got married.
Fremont was the first Republican candidate for president. He ran in 1856.
To clarify what Puddleglum said, Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, and supposedly the identity of his father is far from certain. His mother later married a man named Clinton and Bill eventually took his stepfather’s surname.
In addition, I have read that Lincoln himself believed that his parents were never officially married either. Decades after his death a marriage record for them was found by researchers.
I’ve heard that Warren Harding was a real bastard. An absolute SOB. What a rotten, no-good. . .
Oh, sorry. You mean actual person born to an unwed mother.
Never mind.