# Death in the White House
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 21, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927 "2025-03-21T19:22:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/1 "2025-03-21T19:22:46Z")
Something I just got a wonderment about: How many people have died in the White House?
There’ve been several Presidents who’ve died in office. Checking their Wikipages, I find that three died there:
William Henry Harrison
Zachary Taylor
James A. Garfield
Another death there was Willie Lincoln, son of Abraham. I don’t know of any others. Have there been more?
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### Author:  [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/2 "2025-03-21T19:42:47Z")
Leticia Tyler?
I thought Garfield died at some summer home near the ocean?
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### Author:  [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/3 "2025-03-21T19:47:25Z")
Here’s one list, if anyone wants to cheat.
> **[Over 200 years, only 10 people have ever died inside the White House — here's...](https://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-facts-how-many-people-have-died-2018-2#frederick-dent-father-of-first-lady-julia-grant-december-16-1873-5)**
>
> Here's a White House fact: Over 218 years, only 10 people have ever died in the White House, according to the White House Historical Association.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/4 "2025-03-21T21:13:13Z")
Here’s somebody who was left off that list:
> **[Slavery and the White House](https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-backgrounders/slavery-and-the-white-house)**
>
> Construction on the President’s House began in 1792. The decision to place the capital on land ceded by two states that permitted slavery—Virginia and Maryland—ultimately influenced the acquisition of lab...
> The first child born at the White House was born into slavery. In November 1801, Ursula Granger Hughes, a fourteen-year-old enslaved cook, arrived at the White House from Monticello to work in Thomas Jefferson’s presidential household. She gave birth to a child, likely named Asnet Hughes, in March 1802. Unfortunately, the child was in fragile health and by the late summer, the child died, and Hughes returned to Monticello.
There may have been others.
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/5 "2025-03-21T21:53:10Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#):
>
> I thought Garfield died at some summer home near the ocean?
OK, I missed the part of the Wikipage saying they moved him to NJ. So I was wrong there.
And thanks @Procrustus for the link.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/6 "2025-03-21T21:58:29Z")
During FDR’s administration people were [dying like flies](https://cozy-mystery.com/elliott-roosevelt.html).
And one more during [Truman’s](https://cozy-mystery.com/margaret-truman.html).
.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/7 "2025-03-22T00:09:50Z")
I don’t see how that was a reply to my post; which was about a nonfictional person.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/8 "2025-03-22T01:40:29Z")
The question was fully answered. Joke responses are allowed after that.
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### Author:  [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/9 "2025-03-22T02:27:00Z")
> [@dtilque](#):
>
> William Henry Harrison
> Zachary Taylor
These two were likely victims of the White House’s unsanitary plumbing practices during its early years (James Polk was another victim, but he died a few months after leaving office).
Basically, their drinking water was downstream from a latrine.
> [@](#):
>
> In those days the nation’s capital had no sewer system. Until 1850, some sewage simply flowed onto public grounds a short distance from the White House, where it stagnated and formed a marsh; the White House water supply was just seven blocks downstream of a depository for “night soil,” hauled there each day at government expense.
>
> That field of human excrement would have been a breeding ground for two deadly bacteria, Salmonella typhi and S. paratyphi, the causes of typhoid and paratyphoid fever — also known as enteric fever, for their devastating effect on the gastrointestinal system.
> **[Did A "Field of Human Excrement" By The White House Kill A President?](https://gizmodo.com/did-a-field-of-human-excrement-by-the-white-house-kil-1557095821)**
>
> If you remember President William Henry Harrison from U.S. history class at all, then you probably remember him as the poor fellow who died from pneumonia
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/10 "2025-03-22T16:02:58Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> The question was fully answered. Joke responses are allowed after that
To the thread, yes (though whether it’s been fully answered is unclear, which was part of the point of my post.) But why to my specific post?
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/11 "2025-03-22T17:09:40Z")
Simply because dtilque’s post folowed yours with a comment about someone _not_ dying in the White House and I wanted to tie back to the thread. Nothing personal.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/12 "2025-03-22T17:23:46Z")
There is a general ‘reply to thread’ button.
I’m not concerned about it personally; I usually just assume somebody clicked the wrong reply button. But in this case it reads to me as if you were being dismissive of the fact that at least one person (maybe more) who died in the White House was left off the list published by Business Insider and apparently taken from the White House Historical Association, despite the information being easy to find; possibly because they weren’t famous, possibly because they were enslaved.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/13 "2025-03-22T17:41:52Z")
That’s what you thought? No, and totally no. I thought you found a fascinating fact you found. As a researcher, I had a slight concern because the cite didn’t say explicitly that the baby died in the White House, but I checked and found that slave quarters situated outside the building hadn’t been built yet so it probably doesn’t need to be said.
As for the rest, I’m sorry you feel you need to think like that. I just found it funny that not one but two presidential children put their names on ghostwritten mystery series about murder in the White House and I couldn’t resist mentioning them in a thread with this title.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/14 "2025-03-22T17:59:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> That’s what you thought? No, and totally no. I thought you found a fascinating fact you found. As a researcher, I had a slight concern because the cite didn’t say explicitly that the baby died in the White House, but I checked and found that slave quarters situated outside the building hadn’t been built yet so it probably doesn’t need to be said.
Thanks, I think we’re all straightened out now! And thanks for checking that additional info about the slave quarters – the article I cited did say explicitly that Asnet Hughes (probable name) was born in the White House, and also said that enslaved persons often had rooms in the attics or basement; but I shouldn’t have leapt to the conclusion, though that combination of information did make it seem very likely.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/15 "2025-03-22T18:14:39Z")
I thought I remembered that the White House had outdoor slave quarters on the grounds. That doesn’t seem to be true. The Decatur House was taken over for additional slaves, but that wasn’t until the 1820s. All signs indicate that the birth - 14-year-old Ursula was already pregnant when she arrived - and death were indeed in the house.
Now that my memory’s been jogged, I remember that I clicked on your post to enter a comment about the lack of explicitness but then did more digging. So I deleted the first half of my post and just left the joke about the mystery series. But Discourse left the pointer to you. Mystery solved!
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/16 "2025-03-22T18:43:50Z")
I can’t speak for the OP, but in my opinion the distinction between dying in the actual White House, and dying on White House grounds outside the actual building is a trivial one anyway.
So, for example, [Frank Eugene Corder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eugene_Corder) who crashed a plane on the White House lawn would count.
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### Author:  [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-in-the-white-house/1015927/17 "2025-03-22T19:22:27Z")
I didn’t think of the possibility of people dying outside the WH when I posted the thread. But, sure we’ll count them. Any more?