William Henry Harrison

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second in a nine-part series looking at Ohio's history of presidents. Some of the information was gleaned from a kit provided by the Ohio Historical Society released in 1967 titled "Portraits of Ohio Presidents." Ashland Source has entered into a collaborative agreement with the Ohio History Connection to share content across our sites.

INDIANAPOLIS—Ninth U.S. President William Henry Harrison would have been 249 Wednesday if he hadn’t died a month into office, allegedly of pneumonia. Denver Bays, despite being the southeast regional program developer for the Corydon Capitol State Historic Site, housed in an area that Harrison once owned, was surprised to hear of the news—of his birthday, not his death.

Grouseland, a National Historic Landmark since 1960, was William Henry Harrison’s history-making Indiana home for 12 years. In 1800, President John Adams named 27-year-old Harrison, the youngest son of a prominent Virginia planter/politician, the first governor of the Indiana Territory, with its capital in Vincennes. Soon after arriving in Vincennes, founded by French traders along the Wabash River in 1732, Harrison established Jefferson Academy (now Vincennes University). In 1802, Harrison and his wife Anna began building a 5,000-square-foot federal-style mansion on a 300-acre riverfront site Harrison named “Grouseland” for its birds. The 13-room house, completed in 1804 at a cost of $25,000 (about $540,000 today), incorporated 400,000 bricks fashioned from local clay. The first floor featured a council room and dining room, and the second floor, reached by a self-supporting curved staircase, contained six bedrooms. The Harrisons imported many of the house’s furnishings from Europe. During 12 years as governor, Harrison negotiated 11 treaties with Native American tribes, five signed at Grouseland, obtaining a total of 60,000,000 acres for the United States. The 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne drew the anger of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee leader, who met twice with Harrison outdoors at Grouseland, demanding that he abrogate it. Harrison’s insistence on maintaining the treaty precipitated the Battle of Tippecanoe.

In our oldest “Olden Days” to date–by far–we examine an editorial published by an early Pocono newspaper in June 1840. Remarkably, the story is partly about an event that had occurred 27 years earlier in Hellertown, that being a celebration of Gen. William Henry Harrison’s defeat of British forces at the Battle of the Thames during the War of 1812.

The United States Mint (Mint) will accept orders for the William Henry Harrison Presidential Silver Medal starting on May 3 at noon EDT. The Department of the Treasury has a long-standing tradition of honoring each President of the United States with an official bronze medal struck by the Mint. The Mint is now replicating this series of medals in .999 percent fine silver, each measuring 1.598 inches in diameter.

Sympathy and fundraising are not enough for political change. General William Henry Harrison, a victor of the Indian and English 1812 War said, “Not Enough”. Scholar Eva Catafygiotu-Topping brought to life this Phil-Hellene in a Pilgrimage magazine publication. General Harrison became the 9th USA president in 1840. He was an aristocratic Virginian, like George Washington, born in 1773. His father, Benjamin Harrison, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In 1824, he was Cincinnati, Ohio’s most famous citizen. On Friday, January 23, 1824, he delivered an astonishing speech on Greek Independence to 600 persons in Cincinnati’s First Presbyterian Church.

During his governorship his army occupation was enhanced when he defeated the Prophet at Tippecanoe in 1811. Read more about the harrison floral park here. He was given command of the Army of the Northwest in the loss of 1812 and resigned as governor a couple of months later on. His forces emphatically beat the British at the Battle of the Thames in 1813. The issues of money reform as well as economic equity were additionally matters that Harrison was urged to deal with. As head of state, Harrison signed the Sherman Antitrust Act right into law in an initiative to reduce monopolies.

It’s common wisdom that William Henry Harrison delivered one killer of a speech after being sworn in as the ninth president of the United States—and it had nothing to do with anything he said. Ignoring the advice of vigilant mothers everywhere, “Old Tippecanoe” swore off his overcoat, hat and gloves...