General William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison was born on February 9, 1773, at Berkeley Plantation in Virginia. He briefly attended Hampden-Sydney College, studied medicine, and joined the Army in 1791. In 1794, he became the commander of Fort Washington (now Cincinnati) and married Ann Symmes. After resigning in 1798, he
served as secretary of the Northwest Territory and was appointed governor of the Indiana Territory in 1800 by President John Adams. Harrison sought to remove Native Americans from Indiana, negotiating an 1809 treaty that ceded 2,900,000 acres of land. In 1811, he commanded militia forces against Native
Americans united under Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe, which made him a national hero. During the War of 1812, he became a brigadier general and led a major victory at the Battle of the Thames in Canada. After leaving the military, Harrison moved to North Bend, Ohio, where he was elected to Congress
in 1816 and the Senate in 1819. He unsuccessfully ran for president in 1836 but won in 1840 alongside John Tyler, using the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” Unfortunately, Harrison caught pneumonia during his inaugural address and died 31 days later on April 4, 1841. He was buried in North Bend, Ohio.
His grandson, Benjamin Harrison, would later become U.S. president in 1888.