No. Ford wasn’t even his birth name; it was Leslie Lynch King, Jr. His parents divorced when he was a year old.
To expand a bit, automaker Henry Ford (1863-1947) had only one child, Edsel Ford (1893-1943). President Gerald Ford (b. 1913), is not Edsel’s son (or stepson).
Paper counts. I’m talking about net worth here.
No nitpick too extreme here! He was always out of contention.
No recent President was dirt-poor. Nixon was closest, but his family was struggling working class at worst. Clinton’s family was middle class apparently. George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson (although his family went back and forth from being rich to being middle class), John Kennedy, and Franklin Roosevelt, among recent Presidents, grew up in rich families. You’d have to go back to the nineteenth century to find a President who grew up dirt-poor, and I’m not certain that any President even then grew up that poor. American Presidents don’t come from dirt-poor families. Often they come from rich families.
I’m not sure what the definition of “growing up poor” is, however I’d think Andrew Johnson would have to fit that description.
While many Presidents made the facetious claim of being born in a log cabin, Andrew Johnson actually was. Log cabins were pretty simple affairs, dirt floors in many of them, I think living in one qualifies you as poor. He was also poor enough that his family could never afford to send him to any sort of school at all.
Some of the other American Presidents who are depicted as growing up in some poverty at least were able to attend some school. Lincoln for example was able to attend school periodically as a child. Johnson however never had any formal schooling at all.
Once he married and established a family Johnson’s prospects in life changed dramatically. He had picked up a trade (tailoring) and was able to become a relatively well-off business man before he started on his political career.
I think there were many Presidents who group squarely in the middle class. Grant’s family was neither poor nor truly wealthy, either. Grant’s father was a fairly prosperous tanner, and eventually relocated to a modest farm, but I don’t think the Grant family would really fit into the upper class.
Until Clinton’s stepfather came into the picture Bill did group up in poverty, although it was only for roughly four years. I’d say his stepfather provided Clinton with a middle class lifestyle, certainly not upper class.
I’d say Truman also grew up in a middle class lifestyle, at best. His family couldn’t afford to send him to college, which doesn’t necessarily make them poor considering in the 1880s most people didn’t go to college.
Nitpick- since he was born in 1884, HST wasn’t of college age until the 1910s. Not that there was a huge difference in college attendence between the 1880s and 1910s.
Thanks folks, it seems the answer to my question was indeed Ike all along. I suspect if we include candidates (who had a serious chance of being elected, ie from a major party) then the results wouldn’t change much if at all.
In 50 years the question may well be valid for billionaires!
I’m confused. Why do you conclude that Ike is the answer? You don’t trust the Encylopedia Americana’s statement that Jimmy Carter “had a net worth of $600,000” at the time he ran for president? (See Freddy tP’s post.)
The answer was Clinton.
No President back in the 1800s had substantial assets? I find that hard to believe.
There is a joke in that, somewhere.
First Among Daves writes:
> No President back in the 1800s had substantial assets?
Nobody said that. The closest to that claim that anyone made was my statement that you’d have to do back to the 19th century to find any U.S. President who grew up dirt-poor. Nobody claimed that all 19th century Presidents were dirt-poor.
[unknown comic]
I just rented an apartment over a bank…and now my assets over a million dollars!
[/unknown comic]
Well, I don’t know any such person, but fifty years ago I imagine it was entirely possible to consider yourself poor and still have hired household help who were even poorer. I think this may have been especially true in the South. In fiction, at least, Atticus Finch described his family as poor, but they had a black maid. Going back further you might see even more of this sort of thing. According to the companion website to the PBS series Edwardian House, a lowly office clerk in 1905 might well have had a couple of servants at home.
Or even high school, in those days.
Cause I missed it entirely, tucked away at the end of his post like that?
Sorry, Freddy.
I wrote:
> . . . you’d have to do back to the 19th century . . .
I meant:
> . . . you’d have to go back to the 19th century . . .
Let me rephrase that. A 19th century American president might not have been a millionaire. But transport costs alone, assuming they did even a small percentage of the toured electioneering we see today, must have been very expensive. Surely the majority of them if not millionaires were pretty close to being so.
They didn’t. With rare exceptions (Stephen Douglas, William Jennings Bryan), Nineteenth Century candidates didn’t travel or campaign on their own behalf. It was considered undignified.
Such expenses as campaigns did incur—hiring speakers, printing signs and electoral tickets, and above all providing free booze at campaign rallies—were borne mostly by campaign contributors, just as they are today.
During the early Nineteenth Century, when the presidency was dominated by Southerners, most presidents were in fact rather wealthy. This wasn’t a function of the cost of campaigning; it was simply a reflection of aristocratic domination of Southern political life and Southern domination of national politics.
(These Southern plantations owners, however, were not millionaires. A million dollars was unimaginable wealth in the early 1800’s. The Louisiana Purchase only cost $15 million!)
During the later Nineteenth Century, most presidents were of more modest means. Lincoln grew up poor and was perhaps upper middle class when elected. Andrew Johnson truly grew up dirt poor and also was perhaps upper middle class when elected. US Grant was on the verge of bankruptcy most of his life, and was doing a little better when elected only because grateful neighbors gave him a house in Galena! Hayes, Garfield, and McKinley were also of relatively modest means.
It costs over 50 million dollars to successfully run a campaign for presidency. If there ever was a presisdent who wasn’t filthy rich then he had some very supportive friends.
But in the days before mass media advertising, the expenses of presidential campaigns were much lower. And as Freddy the Pig said, before the 20th century, candidates did not actively campaign for the presidency. Their parties did the work for them.