It is difficult to imagine the pressure of being the child of a president USA. Being in the spotlight at such a young age must be incredibly difficult – not to mention leaving your friends behind to start your new life in the White House. But perhaps the worst part of being a child of a president is having to respond somewhat to your parents’ legacy. But who are the former presidents with the most children?
Former US presidents with the most children
According to POTUS.com and what grunge.com reports, American presidents had, on average, 4.1 children. A rate much higher than the current national average – 1.9 children per family, Statista reports – but it is roughly in line with what one would expect given the birth rate of the last two centuries.
Interestingly, however, there was only one president who never became a biological father, nor did he adopt children: the eleventh president, James Knox Polk, while James Buchanan, America’s only unmarried president, adopted the orphan his niece.
On the opposite side, however, there are many with Polk presidents who had many children. The exact number of which can not be easily determined, as many presidents made children who refused to recognize – some, in a few cases, even with their slaves. So while we may never know the exact number of children each president had, experts have speculated.
The third US president, Thomas Jefferson, is in the third place in the hierarchy with the presidents with the most children. According to grunge.com, Jefferson and his wife Martha had six children together, of whom only two daughters survived to adulthood. However, according to Monticello.org, it is now widely accepted that Thomas Jefferson had at least six other children with Sally Hemmings, a woman he enslaved.
However, Jefferson was not the only president to have children with female slaves. Ninth President William Henry Harrison has a similar story. It is known that Harrison had 10 children with his wife Anna – yet only two of them lived beyond the age of 40, according to the University of Virginia. According to historian Kenneth Janken, William Henry Harrison probably had (at least) six additional children with Dilsia, a female slave. Unlike Jefferson – who freed all the children he had with Hemmings – Harrison gave most of his enslaved children to his brother, who sold them.
On the other hand, the 10th president John Tyler, is definitely the president with the most “legal” children. With his first wife, Leticia, he had eight children and another seven with his second wife, Julia, according to History.com. The majority of these children survived into adulthood.
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