History is Closer Than We Think

June 25, 2026

History is Closer Than We Think

As I work on the IV Leake Mysteries, I've been computing family lines and the historical events and eras they knew. If I'm writing about a character today, is it going to be his grandfather or great-grandfather who was a young adult during Prohibition? I recently wrote about my grandfather, whose life spanned from before the last wagon train headed west to three decades after space travel began.

Harrison Ruffin Tyler has an even more amazing historical span. He was the grandson of the tenth president of the United States, President John Tyler, who served 181 years ago from 1841 - 1845. What's amazing about the story is that Harrison Ruffin Tyler, John Tyler's grandson, died barely a year ago, in May of 2025--235 years after the birth of his grandfather!

How is this possible?

It's the result of two generations of men who fathered children late in life with much younger wives, and a man who lived to a fine old age:

John Tyler was born in 1790
John Tyler fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Sr. in 1853, when he was 63.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler's son Harrison was born in 1928 when Lyon was 75.
Harrison, grandson of John Tyler, born in 1928, lived to be 96, dying in May of 2025

Why does this matter? Because it reminds us how close 'history' really is. We think, especially today, of history being a strange, foreign world peopled by people with strange clothes, speech, ideas, and ways. We live in a world that can't even comprehend building the great stone libraries and government buildings of the 1800s, let alone wearing knee breeches and powdering our hair. For most of us, our grandparents dress fairly similarly to us--pants, shirts, shorts, skirts that go to the knee or even calf, but certainly not full-length dresses every day! To live with cars and electricity feels normal while carrying shotguns, field hospitals with no anesthetic, and having only candles for our evening light feels foreign, a time beyond anyone's memory.

Yet Harrison Ruffin Tyler, in 2025, could speak of his grandfather being born in the 1700s! While Lyon Gardiner Tyler was only 7 when his father died, it's possible Harrison Ruffin Tyler grew up hearing of his grandfather attending dinner, at the age of 19, with Thomas Jefferson, or of his father, John Tyler, Sr., studying law at Williamsburg with Thomas Jefferson.

Lyon Gardiner Tyler may have heard from his mother or relatives, how his grandfather, the colonial John Tyler, Sr., heard Patrick Henry's Stamp Act speech in 1765, and how that swayed him to the Patriot cause; how his grandfather raised a militia company in 1775 and served in the continental army. And maybe Lyon passed these stories on to Harrison, giving him a very close connection, through his family, to the Founders of our nation, perhaps to family stories from people who knew them personally--and those family stories from those who knew the Founders or met them personally, are stories that likely are different from what we hear in today's 'history.'

John Tyler, Sr., whose stories may well have come down fairly directly to Harrison Tyler who lived right up into our own age, started his life in colonial America. John Tyler, the tenth US president, was born into a world only seven years beyond the end of the Revolutionary War. His entire life, everyone he knew, had been English colonists, many of whom had made the decision to stand against England and risk all to create a new country. John Tyler, Jr. became our tenth president and John Tyler, Jr's grandson was with us until just 13 months ago. History, our American history, is right there in this one man's life.

An example from my own life is that my great-uncle was ordained in June of 1931. I believe he was ordained in Rome. Somewhere in that time, he heard Hitler speak in person in the 1930s and told his family about the experience: He could tell you black was white and you'd find yourself nodding and agreeing even though you knew it wasn't true. Our history books tell us a side of the story that personal experience doesn't. History books, unfortunately, are often dry bare-bone facts that leave us grasping to understand how...how the Holocaust could happen. My uncle's experience is part of the answer: personalities, charisma, the ability to speak, charm, weave words together. Propaganda is another part of the answer, as Hitler was able to push his message over media and airwaves, over and over and over...and over...and over.

There is a lesson to be learned from this personal experience of history, as relayed to me by my great-uncle from his personal experience with someone we mostly know only from history books. The lesson to me is: THINK. Think critically. Listen to the words. Process what is actually being said and what the logical conclusions are. Seek out all sides of a story. The news doesn't tell us everything.

As a writer of historical fiction, this story of Harrison Tyler speaks strongly to what I have long believed: the people of the past may have dressed and spoken differently than us. They may have had very different technology. But they really are no different from us and part of understanding history requires understanding that human nature never changes. From Cain and Abel to the Tower of Babel, to ancient Rome to medieval tournaments and wars to the Bay of Pigs -- people, and thus the historical events that shape all our lives -- are the same and are driven by the same things: by ego, greed, lust, a desire to help others, hope, faith, fear, the hope of personal gain.

Their stories really aren't as distant or foreign as we think and we need to learn from them. Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. So let us learn history well, not only from the history books that tell us what they want us to believe, but from those who knew the people of the past, those who have passed down the stories.

~ ~ ~

If you would like to follow this blog, sign up HERE

If you like an author's posts, please click like and share

It helps us continue to do what we do