John Scott Harrison was the only person in history to be the son of one American President and the father of another President. He was born on October 4, 1804, to William Henry Harrison and Anna Symmes Harrison. Unlike many of the previous Representatives from Ohio's 2nd District, Harrison was born into a well-known and wealthy family. His maternal grandfather was a prosperous judge originally from Long Island, who moved to Ohio after purchasing over 300,000 acres of it from the Congress. The land he bought and surveyed was most of what is today Hamilton County. His paternal grandfather was part of a prominent political family from Virginia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Harrison was the fifth of 10 children, and at that time his parents were living in Vincennes, IN, where his father was serving as governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory. His father had already distinguished himself both in the military and as the first delegate to Congress representing the Northwest Territory. Harrison's early years were spent in Indiana until his father resigned from that post in 1813 to take command of the Army of the Northwest during the War of 1812. William Henry Harrison continued to win military victories over the British and over Indian confederations, and eventually moved his family back to Ohio where he became a United States Senator

Early on, John Harrison had studied medicine but later abandoned that pursuit in favor of agricultural studies and became a farmer. His first wife died early in their marriage leaving him with three children. He married again in 1831, this time to Elizabeth Ramsey Irwin. They had 10 children, but two died very young. In 1833, his second child Benjamin was born, who later was elected President of the United States in 1888. In 1840, John Harrison's father William Henry Harrison became President, but died in 1841, one month after taking office. After the President's death, John Harrison's mother came to live with him and later helped raise his children (his wife Elizabeth died in 1850). Harrison struggled financially to raise his children, but did manage to provide them with decent educations, and sent Benjamin to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

In the 1850's, Harrison finally embarked on a political career of his own. In 1852, he won election to the 33rd Congress as a Whig representing Ohio's 2nd District. He was re-elected to the following term as an Opposition Party candidate (transition party to Republican). He lost the 1856 election to Democrat William Groesbeck and retired from his brief time in politics. He lived from then on at his estate called "Point Farm" near North Bend, Ohio, until he died there on May 25, 1878.

He was buried in the Harrison family tomb in North Bend, but shortly thereafter his body was stolen from its grave. According to the Scholarly Journal of the Ohio Historical Society, it became known as "the Harrison Case" and was "the most sensational case of body snatching ever to occur in Ohio, and perhaps in the United States." His son and a friend later discovered his body in the quarters of a medical student, who apparently had wanted a corpse for medical study but lacked the means to obtain one legally.

Sources:
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Ohio Historical Society
Infoplease
Link on body snatching: (can also use it to get to the Scholarly Journal of the Ohio Historical Society)
Picture found at: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8624

>back