Grover Cleveland

by Russ Roberts on August 7, 2006

Grover Cleveland’s grandson, George Cleveland, is running for state senator in New Hampshire. How does Grover, born 169 years ago, have a 54 year-old grandson?

Family marriage to younger women helps explain why the
president, born in 1837, still has grandchildren living 169 years
later. President Grover Cleveland, at age 49, married a 21-year-old
woman in 1886 who had been his ward. Then, George’s father, Richard
Cleveland, in his mid-40s, married a much-younger woman who had taught
the children from Richard’s first marriage.

It’s always nice to have a reason to think about Grover Cleveland. Cleveland actually believed in the importance of this interesting document called the Constitution.

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R.J. Lehmann

And just think -- two out of those three were Democrats from New York.

TGGP

Is it you or the other blogger here who asserts the Constitution is "not written on paper but in the hearts of the people". I prefer Spooner's emphasis on the actual words in the document and their meaning, even if he felt the document itself was "No Authority" (and I myself think it would have been better if we had stuck with the Articles of Confederation).

Many of the best presidents are the ones we never hear about: van Buren, Cleveland and Coolidge.

Kevin

How funky, that's like being Jesus's great-nephew.

K

These things can be startling at first glance.

One of my grandfathers was born before Napoleon died. And my son has an excellent chance to stretch the string of only four generations into a fourth century - 19th, 20th, today, 21st.

Oddly enough my other grandfather fought in the Civil War. He was no kid when my mother was born.

No wonder I alway regarded Cleveland as an unfairly forgotten, great President.

Steve

Just think if Strom Thurmond's, Larry King's, or Tony Randall's sons wait until late in life to have children. There's a hundred an fifteen year gap between Grover Cleveland's birth and his grandson's. This could be topped by decades.

The age gap between successive generations of males in my family is not as extreme (approx 35 yrs/generation), but I'm not yet thirty, and I found it remarkable that my grandfather told me stories of his grandfather's experiences as a boy in the 1840s. I found it amazing that I could hear stories of events from the Tyler administration on a second-hand basis. The stories themselves (much like this post)... not that interesting.