Sons

Last week Lyon Gardiner Tyler, son of the tenth President of the U.S., 70 years of age, President Emeritus of William and Mary College, took a second wife. Except for seven years engaged in law practice in Richmond, Dr. Tyler has spent his life as an educator. He was President of William and Mary College from 1898 until his resignation in 1919. His first marriage took place 45 years ago. A widower, he married Miss Sue Ruffin, 35, great granddaughter of the man who fired the first gun at Fort Sumter. Dr. Tyler and his bride will live at "The Den," Holdcroft, Va.

While the son of the tenth President was thus attending at the altar, the sons of the 30th President, John and Calvin Coolidge, were gathering their tennis rackets and radio sets together in preparation of departure for Mercersburg, Pa., the seat of learning where Mercersburg Academy is situated.

The two fathers of these sons represent the extreme brackets of those Presidents whose sons are living. But Dr. Tyler is not the oldest living son of a President. Since Dr. Tyler was not born until 1853, when his father, then 63, had been retired from the Presidency for eight years, the son of the 16th President, Robert Todd Lincoln, now 80, can assert the claim of being the oldest " Son." The rail-splitter's son served on General Grant's staff during the Civil War, became a lawyer in Chicago, and as such rose to headship of the Pullman Co. (Chicago), and served as director of the Continental and Commercial Bank, the Commonwealth Edison Co., both of Chicago. In an interval between his military and business careers (during the administrations of Garfield, Arthur and Harrison) he was Secretary of War and Ambassador to Great Britain. From the latter post he departed with a Cecilian stoop and an English " A." He now belongs to the quieter set in the octogenarian society of Washington.

The infrequency with which Mr. Lincoln is exhibited in the daily press was originally accounted for by the fact that his Chicago law partner was intimately associated with the Medills, whose Tribune was credited with power to make or hide, journalistically, any Chicagoan. Mr. Lincoln preferred to be hidden.

Successful eminence sits also upon the banners of the Garfields, approaching their sixties, and the Roosevelts, in their thirties. Harry A. Garfield is President of Williams College; James R., a distinguished Cleveland lawyer, formerly Mr. Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior; Aram, an architect, also of Cleveland.

The name of Quentin Roosevelt lives with his father's. His three brothers were also war heroes, having won among them at least half-a-dozen decorations. Theodore, Jr., is, as everyone knows, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Archibald is in oil with the Sinclair interests; Kermit is in New York shipping.

"Taft and Taft" (the two younger Tafts) are now lawyers in the home town of Cincinnati. A seat in the Ohio Assembly belong to Robert A. Charles Phelps, II, was nationally known some years since as the idol of Yale's campus.

And Richard Folsom Cleveland, now immersed in law studies, was recently an intellectual and moral weight in Princeton. He led the fight against the clubs, nor did the Phi Beta Kappa lessen his kudos. In June, 1923, he married Miss Ellen Douglas Gailor, daughter of Bishop Thomas F. Gailor (who lives in Memphis, Tenn.).

There are others-- U.S. Grant, Jr., of San Diego; R. Benjamin Harrison, of Indianapolis, both lawyers. It is further reported that there is a son of Rutherford B. Hayes living. This, however, has not been verified by TIME.

Helen Taft had the original distinction of being Dean and Acting President of Bryn Mawr, before she was 30. Three Summers ago she married a Yale instructor and is now Mrs. Frederick J. Manning of New Haven.

President McKinley had neither sons nor daughters. One child of his brother Abner-- Mrs. H.L. Baer -- is an accomplished soprano (see page 17).