John tyler biography
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John Tyler (–)
Early Years
Tyler was born on March 29, , at Greenway, his family&#;s plantation in Charles City County. His father, John Tyler, had been Speaker of the House of Delegates during the s and a member of the Convention of His mother, Mary Armistead Tyler, died of a stroke when he was seven years old. Five years later Tyler entered the preparatory department of the College of William and Mary and at age fourteen began his college coursework. After completing his studies in , he read law with his father (who served as governor of Virginia from to and as a federal district court judge from to ) before being admitted to the bar in On March 29, , Tyler married Letitia Christian. They had three sons and five daughters, one of whom died at birth.
The House of Representatives, –
Tyler embarked on his long public career in December when he began the first of five consecutive one-year terms representing Charles City County in the House of Delegates. Despite his youth, on De
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Born to an affluent family on March 29, , John Tyler spent most of his life in Charles City County, Virginia. He was raised on the Tyler family plantation, Greenway, and lived there until he attended the College of William & Mary, graduating in He then prepared for a career in law, studying with his father John Tyler, Sr., and Edmund Randolph, former United States Attorney General. After marrying Letitia Christian in , John purchased a tract of nation in Charles City County and built his own plantation, Woodburn, shortly thereafter.
According to the census, there were twenty-four enslaved people living at Woodburn with the Tylers, some of whom were inherited from his father’s estate. Ten years later, the Tyler household had grown exponentially from three to seven children, ranging in age from fifteen-year-old Mary to newborn Tazewell. The enslaved community had grown as well—twenty-nine individuals, and more than half were under the age of ten. Click here to learn more about t • John Tyler's rise to the highest office in the nation signaled the last gasp of old Virginia aristocracy in the White House. Born a few years after the American Revolution in to a family that traced its roots back to the s in the Old Dominion, Tyler was the last President of the nineteenth century raised there. The man to whom his fate would be tied, William Henry Harrison, was born in the same county, and both their fathers served as governor of Virginia. John and Mary Armistead Tyler raised each of their eight children to be part of the region's elite gentry, and their boys received the best education available. The senior John Tyler, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, owned a tobacco plantation of over a thousand acres, tended by dozens of slaves. He also served as a judge in the U.S. Circuit Court at Richmond. A fervent advocate of states' rights, which would preserve his power, he vigorously opposed the Constitution and the rights it John Tyler: Life Before the Presidency