Tragic Events in the Lives of US Presidents and Their Families

The hero of the American Revolution and the nation’s first president suffered misfortune as a child. His sister, Mildred, died when she was 18 months old. Washington’s father, Augustine, passed away when he was 11 years old from a sudden illness.

Jefferson’s wife, Martha, died at age 33 following complications from childbirth. Four of the couple’s six children died before adulthood. (Jefferson also fathered children – probably six of them – with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman in his household; four survived into adulthood.)

James Spence Monroe, the son of the nation’s fifth president, was born in 1799 and died 16 months later in 1800. His two daughters, Maria and Eliza, grew up and married.

Alcoholism was a scourge in the Adams family, and it impacted the life of our nation’s sixth president. George Washington Adams and John Adams II, two of John Quincy Adams’ sons, both died from alcoholism. George apparently committed suicide by jumping overboard after becoming delusional while drunk on a ship.

America’s only Dutch-speaking president suffered heartbreak when his son Winfield Scott died in infancy in 1814. Hannah Van Buren, the wife of the country’s eighth president, died from tuberculosis five years later.

War hero William Henry Harrison was haunted by family tragedy. Of the 10 children born to William Henry and Anna Harrison, just four lived to see him become president. Only two lived past 40. Harrison’s children died in 1817, 1826, 1830, 1838, 1839, and 1840. Harrison himself died in 1841, just 31 days into his presidency – the shortest in American history.

Two of Taylor’s five daughters, Octavia and Margaret, died as young children in 1820 from fever. Another daughter, Sarah, who married future Confederacy president Jefferson Davis, died from cholera two months after her wedding in 1835.

Franklin Pierce Jr., son of the future president died in infancy. Another son, Frank Robert, died from typhus. A third, Benjamin, known as Benny, was killed at the age of 11 in a train accident while traveling with his parents on the way to his father’s inauguration.

Edward, second son of future president Abraham Lincoln, died from tuberculosis at age 3. His health was poor from the time he was born. Willie, his third son, died 10 months later, aged 11, from typhoid fever. Tad, his fourth son, made it to 18 before dying of what may have been tuberculosis or pneumonia about six years after his father’s assassination. Mary, the former first lady, descended into madness after the deaths of her husband and fourth son.

The first president to be impeached suffered a series of family tragedies. Johnson’s son Charles died in 1863 from injuries sustained after he was thrown from a horse while serving in the Union Army as an assistant surgeon. Son Robert killed himself after a long battle with alcoholism; his brother Andrew Jr., known as Frank, was also an alcoholic, and died from tuberculosis.

Three of the eight children that the nation’s 19th president fathered died – his fourth, fifth, and seventh sons – all died at the age of 1.

James A. Garfield and his wife Lucretia had seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Eliza Arabella, the first child, died from diphtheria. Edward, known as “Neddie,” passed away from whooping cough. More tragedy was to follow: Garfield became the second president to be assassinated while in office (after Lincoln), serving only six months as president.

Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms in office, lost his eldest daughter Ruth, who contracted diphtheria and died at the age of 12.

Ida, the infant daughter of future president William McKinley, died at just 4 months old. Her mother, also named Ida, believed the loss was some sort of punishment and worried that something bad would happen to her other daughter Katie. Indeed, Katie contracted typhoid fever and passed also in 1875, confirming Ida’s worst fears. McKinley himself would fall victim to an assassin’s bullet in 1901, the third president to be slain.

Martha “Mittie” Roosevelt, mother of future president Theodore Roosevelt, died from typhoid fever in 1884. Hours later, his first wife, Alice, of from a kidney ailment. Quentin, Roosevelt’s fourth son, was killed in aerial combat in World War I.

Calvin Coolidge Jr. died from sepsis caused by an infection in his toe after playing tennis. His father, whom many thought was cool and aloof, was consumed by anguish and the loss diminished his presidency, which he had assumed following the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. He chose not to seek another term in office in 1928.

The second son and namesake of the nation’s future 33rd president died from a heart ailment after just seven months of life. Another son, born in 1914, was given the same name.

The commander of the Western Allied forces in World War II and the 34th president lost his son Doud in 1921 at the age of 3 from scarlet fever. The child died in his arms. Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, would send flowers and notes to each other on the child’s birthday for years afterward.

The month before Kennedy, the youngest man elected as president of the United States, was assassinated, he and his wife, Jacqueline, lost their fourth child, Patrick, two days after his birth. The child suffered from a lung condition called hyaline membrane disease. Thirty-six years after the assassination of his father, John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash.

Richard M. Nixon, the only president who has ever resigned from office, lost his brother Arthur to tubercular encephalitis (age 7), and his brother Harold from tuberculosis (age 24).

Pauline Robinson Bush, called Robin, the oldest daughter of the president George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, and the second of their five children, died of leukemia at age 3.

Barack Obama Sr., who had held jobs in the banking and finance industries in Kenya, died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Kenya.

Fred Trump Jr. was the older brother of businessman and future president Donald J. Trump. He died from a heart attack at age 42 after battling alcoholism much of his life. His brother’s alcoholism is one of the reasons why Donald Trump does not drink liquor.

Shortly after he was elected as a U.S. senator from Delaware in 1972, Joe Biden suffered tragedy when a car accident killed his wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi. More sorrow was to follow when brain cancer killed his adult son Beau in 2015 while Biden was vice-president.