"Motley Crew"?

The following have already been Presidents of the United States:

2 who were "anti-war protestors" (Lincoln, against Mexican War; Clinton, against Vietnam War).

5 who never had any children even though married (Washington, Madison, Polk, Jackson, Harding)

2 bachelors:

1 who never married at all (Buchanan)

1 "draft dodger" who "lived together" with a woman he didn't marry (Cleveland)

1 who married a cousin (FD Roosevelt)

2 alcoholics (Grant, and possibly W. H. Harrison)

1 whose mother was on welfare and who was "suspected" of being a "draft dodger" (Clinton)

1 with Hispanic grandchildren (Bush)

2 who were born in log cabins (Lincoln and Garfield)

1 who was born in a shanty, never attended school a day in his life and was illiterate when he got

married (A. Johnson)

2 in wheelchairs (F.D.Roosevelt and Wilson during his last year in office)

1 who was blind in one eye (T. Roosevelt)

1 who was on kidney treatments (today would have been on a kidney machine) (C.A. Arthur)

1 who weighed up to 400 lbs. (Taft)

1 who weighed less than 100 lbs., under whom Washington, D.C., was burned to the ground by a

foreign army (Madison)

1 woman "acting President" for a year (Edith Wilson)

5 Unitarians (Adams, Jefferson, J.Q. Adams, Fillmore and Taft)

4 widowers who never re-married (Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren and Arthur)

1 part-French (L.B. Johnson)

1 who didn't have any church membership at all while he was President (A. Jackson)

1 who never acknowledged any official religious affiliation all his life (Lincoln)

2 Irish:

1 divorced labor union president (Reagan)

1 Catholic, with forbears who were "rum runners" (J. F. Kennedy)

1 who only attended school for one day all his life (Fillmore)

2 who were "suspected" of being part-black (A. Jackson and Harding)

3 who were "suspected" of or actually involved in interracial relationships, either with Native American women "on the frontier" or with slaves (W. H. Harrison, Grant and Jefferson)

1 who had a "gimp" leg due to repeated war wounds (R. B. Hayes)

1 who was a bartender as a child under 18 (Van Buren)

2 who were barely--or possibly not--over five feet tall (Madison and Taylor)

6 hillbillies (Jackson, Lincoln, Johnson, Truman, Carter and Clinton)

6 who had beards (Lincoln, Garfield, Hayes, Grant, B. Harrison, and Arthur)

3 who wore powdered wigs (Washington, Adams and Madison)

1 who worked in a coal mine (Hoover)

And of the Vice-Presidents:

1 was only 36-years old (John C. Breckenridge, Buchanan's VP)

1 was part-Indian (Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover's VP)

1 decided to take his oath of office in Havana, Cuba instead of in Washington, DC (William R. King, Franklin Pierce's VP)

1 killed a man in a duel and was tried for treason (Aaron Burr, Jefferson's VP)

1 was involved in an interracial relationship with a black woman, by whom he had two daughters

(Col. Richard K. Johnson, Martin Van Buren's VP).

Sources: A History of the United States by Brooks Mather Kelly and Daniel J. Boorstin (Lexington, MA: Ginn, 1981); Presidential Campaigns by Paul F. Boller (NY: Oxford UP, 1985); The American Political Tradition by Richard Hoffstadter (NY: Knopf, 1948); Hammond Almanac for 1981, World and Reader's Digest Almanacs for 1968-1993: "Presidents" and "Presidential Biographies". --Max C. Standridge

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