I used to speculate that the reason my grandfather and great-grandfather changed the family name from Harowitz to Harrison was because Benjamin Harrison was president around the time my family was settling into the United States as immigrants from Lithuania.

But if that were so, why did they all become Democrats? Harrison was a staunch Republican. So was his grandfather, William Henry Harrison — back when they called Republicans "Whigs."
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that because 'witz' means 'son' in various Slavic languages, they probably were just Anglicizing "Harowitz" to"Harrison."

As anyone with a presidential name can tell you, you're often asked by people you meet whether you are "any relation to...?" Nope. So far as I know, the presidential Harrisons didn't have a drop of Jewish blood in them.

They'd have been fun to have in the family.

You see, they were an oddball family whose misadventures provided the leitmotif of American politics.

The first famous Harrison was the Benjamin Harrison who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He had an earthy sense of humor. Some people think that the signing of the Declaration of Independence was practically a holy moment in our nation's history, a time of great reverence and purpose.

Benjamin Franklin often is quoted as telling his fellow delegates that they ought to hang together or they would hang separately. Benjamin Harrison, who was quite portly, promptly told Eldridge Gerry, the skinny delegate from Massachussetts who later would become known for the gerrymander, that he would suffer a lot more than Harrison would. As a fat man, said Harrison, he would drop to the end of the hangman's rope and he would die very quickly. But Gerry, being so skinny, would take a long time while he danced and jerked at the bottom of the rope, Harrison told the startled Gerry, who would go on to serve as vice president of the United States under JamesMadison.

So much for your solemn signing ceremony.

Harrison owned a large plantation in Virginia known as Berkeley. It was where his son William Henry grew up. But that didn¹t stop William Henry Harrison from claiming during the presidential campaign of 1840 that he had grown up in a log cabin.

William Henry Harrison primarily was known as the general who defeated the Indian chief Tecumseh in the Battle of Tippecanoe during the War of 1812. When John Tyler became his presidential running mate, they campaigned on the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"— the first known slogan in presidential campaigning.

At his inauguration as the ninth president of the United States, Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address on one of the coldest days on record. Warmed by his own rhetoric, he thereafter stayed outside to greet well-wishers. He subsequently died of pneumonia, after only a month in office — the shortest term in office for any U.S. President.

William Henry Harrison's death created a constitutional crisis; it was not at all clear whether Tyler was the president or the "acting president." Eventually, it was decided he was in fact the 10th president of the United States, but his opponents nevertheless called him "His Accidency."

William Henry Harrison had 10 children, including a son, John Scott Harrison, who followed him into politics and served as a congressman from Cincinnati. John Scott Harrison made a great impact in death, if not life. His body was snatched from a cemetery in 1879 and sold to a local medical school for use as a cadaver. The family located the body and re-purchased it for $4.

The incident caused a great uproar. That such a thing could be done to the body of the son of a U.S. president (as well as the father of a future U.S. president) caused a great deal of indignation. Laws were promulgated requiring strict protocols for how medical schools obtained their bodies.

It had been said that the father was never so stiff as his son, Benjamin Harrison, the nation's 23rd president and the only presidential grandson who also became the U.S. president. Benjamin Harrison (who was named for the signer) lost in the popular vote in 1888 to incumbent President Grover Cleveland but won in the Electoral College. He was such a cold fish that the people could hardly wait to get Cleveland back into the White House. When Harrison lost to Cleveland in 1892, he forever confused the presidential count.

How many presidents have we had? Officially, George W. Bush is the nation¹s
43rd president. But there have been only 42 men occupying the office. Cleveland was the nation's 22nd and 24th president. And we can thank Benjamin Harrison for that!

As the 19th century turned to the 20th, the Harrison family dropped off the
political map. No doubt cartoonists and humorists missed them terribly.
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