Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [21]
Harrison’s wife Anna had stayed behind at their home in North Bend, Ohio, to pack up their belongings. Though she planned to join her husband at the White House in May, she never made the trip.
Episcopal funeral services were conducted in the East Room of the White House, where Harrison’s body was on view in an open casket. The casket was escorted up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House by twenty-six pallbearers, one for each state. The new president, John Tyler, as well as the Cabinet, the Diplomatic Corps, and fourteen militia companies joined 10,000 mourners in the procession. Harrison’s body lay in state at the Capitol before being taken to Washington’s Congressional Cemetery. In June of that year, it was moved to North Bend, Ohio, where the Harrisons had made their home, for permanent burial.
Although she never lived in the White House, Anna Harrison was the first widowed presidential wife to receive a pension. President John Tyler, her husband’s former neighbor in Virginia, granted her the sum of $25,000 in June of 1841. Anna Harrison was buried alongside her husband when she died in 1864.
William Henry Harrison’s 100-foot funeral monument near the banks of the Ohio River
Touring William Henry Harrison’s Tomb at the Harrison Tomb State Memorial
The Harrison Tomb is located in North Bend, Ohio, fifteen miles west of Cincinnati. The tomb is open year-round during daylight hours. Admission is free.
From Cincinnati and other points east: Take U.S. Route 50 West. The Harrison Tomb is located on Cliff Road, west off U.S. Route 50. Follow the signs for the Harrison Tomb State Memorial.
From the west: Take U.S. Route 275 to Route 50 West. The Harrison Tomb is located on Cliff Road, west off Route 50. Follow the signs for the Harrison Tomb State Memorial.
Stone pillars topped by giant eagles mark the entrance to the Harrison Tomb
For additional information
Harrison Tomb
c/o Site Operations Department
The Ohio Historical Society
1982 Velma Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43211
Phone: (800) 686-1535 /
(614) 297-2630
Fax: (614) 297-2628
www.ohiohistory.org/
places/harrison
“…Harrison, no master of the sound bite, is the only American president to die from talking too much.”
—Richard Norton Smith
Ohio boasts chief executives whose chief claim to modern recollection is their funerary monuments. For instance, it took longer to build William Henry Harrison’s hundred-foot shaft overlooking the Ohio River at North Bend, dedicated in 1924, than it did for Harrison to seek, win, and fill the presidency. Contracting pneumonia after delivering a lengthy inaugural address in March 1841, the sixty-eight-year-old Harrison, no master of the sound bite, is the only American president to die from talking too much.
At the Hermitage, his estate outside Nashville, Andrew Jackson could hardly contain his delight at the news. “A kind and overruling providence has interfered to prolong our glorious Union and happy republican system,” Jackson told his old henchman, Francis P. Blair, “which General Harrison and his Cabinet were preparing to destroy under the dictation of the profligate demagogue, Henry Clay.” Fortunately, Harrison’s death put a halt to such dire possibilities. “The Lord ruleth, let our nation rejoice,” Jackson added with a flourish, in a display of partisan bad taste unparalleled in American history.
—RNS
John Tyler
Buried: Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia
Tenth President - 1841-1845
Born: March 29, 1790, in Charles City County, Virginia
Died: 12:15 a.m. on January 18, 1862, in Richmond, Virginia
Age at death: 71
Cause of death: Bilious