Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [19]
“Salts are injurious to all dropsical habits,” Jackson told a fellow sufferer in 1813, “and calomel is the great cleanser of the blood.”
By the spring of 1845, Jackson was, in his own words, “a perfect Jelly from the toes to the upper part of my abdomen, in any part of which a finger can be pressed half-an-inch and the print will remain for minutes.” Due to massive edema, Jackson was literally drowning in his own fluids. Yet even as his tortured body disintegrated, his iron will remained intact. Artist G.P.A. Healy, having already completed two likenesses of the General, wished to beg off a commission to paint Jackson’s beloved granddaughter Sarah because he was late for a session with Henry Clay. On learning this, the dying man’s eyes blazed with indignation.
“Young man,” he snapped, “always do your duty.”
Healy did as he was told, leading Clay to observe, when they belatedly met, “I see that you, like all who approached that man, were fascinated.”
To the end, “that man” remained faithful to his political creed. When a returning naval officer offered the former president an elaborate sarcophagus originally made for the Roman Emperor Severus, Jackson’s refusal was instantaneous. “My republican feelings and principles forbid it,” he wrote; “the simplicity of our system of government forbids it.”
—RNS
Martin Van Buren
Buried: Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery, Kinderhook, New York
Eighth President - 1837-1841
Born: December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York
Died: 2:00 a.m. on July 24, 1862, in Kinderhook, New York
Age at death: 79
Cause of death: Heart failure
Final words: “There is but one reliance.”
Admission to Kinderhook Reformed
Cemetery: Free
One of the most comical and biting assessments of our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, came from Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett. The plain-spoken frontiersman was not impressed when he encountered “what the English call a dandy.” Crockett observed that “when he enters the Senate chamber in the morning, he struts and swaggers like a crow in the gutter.” Crockett thought he saw corsets constricting Van Buren’s ample waist and stung him further: “It would be difficult to say, from his personal appearance, whether he was man or woman.” Crockett concluded that his whiskers resolved any doubt.
The dapper Van Buren was the first president born an American citizen. He served a single term before being defeated for reelection by William Henry Harrison in 1840. Retiring to his Lindenwald estate in Kinderhook, New York, near Albany, he plotted his comeback. Van Buren sought the presidency twice more, but was unsuccessful. Thereafter his withdrawal from public life was complete, save for an occasional editorial on current affairs. His personal time was spent gardening and visiting with lifelong friends.
Martin Van Buren is Kinderhook Reformed Cemetery’s best-known resident
In 1853 Van Buren traveled to Europe, hoping a warmer climate might help his chronic asthma. He stayed there until the summer of 1855, but his respiratory problems resurfaced when he returned. Back in New York, he also suffered a series of falls, including one in which he broke his left arm and another in which he was thrown from a horse. Van Buren’s sense of humor remained intact. After the latter fall, he remarked, “Does not this not speak well of my skull?”
Van Buren was at work on his memoirs when he was stricken with pneumonia in the fall of 1861. He was bedridden thereafter. Martin Van Buren died of heart failure on Friday, July 24, 1862, at the age of seventy-nine, while at home with his sons. The announcement of his death was no surprise to the nation; rumors of the former president’s ill health had been circulating for the past year.
Van Buren’s funeral was held the following Monday at the Reformed Dutch Church of Kinderhook. Parishioners there remembered Van Buren for his loud singing voice—he frequently drowned out the hymns of those around him. Hundreds of mourners who could not fit into the church waited outside until it was time for the public viewing.