Andy Chandler

Photos and Story By Andy Chandler NORTH BEND, Ohio – Despite inclement weather and about an inch of snow falling over the course of three hours, the annual wreath laying at the tomb of the First Indiana Governor General and future U.S. President William Henry Harrison went forward as scheduled last week. Hosted annually by…

To donate one’s body to science is something we take for granted in the realm of end-of-life decisions. However, lost in today’s world is a term seldom remembered: Resurrectionists. Today, we’d call them body snatchers. In the 1800s they were a business, and it was one incident involving them, and a future Hoosier President that would change this.   John Scott Harrison has the honor of being the only man who’s the son of a U.S. President as…

When I ask about US Presidents who have ties to the Hoosier state, the obvious come to mind: Harrison 9, Harrison 23, Lincoln and Nixon. Tricky Dick Nixon? No, that was not a typo. Nixon.   A few years ago, I was catching up with a friend, a park ranger at the Herbert Hoover National Historic site in West Branch,…

“The People choose their president from among themselves and to the people that person will return.” Calvin Coolidge.   It seems unusual to start a column on U.S. History with one of its most recent events. I feel it appropriate since it was only a year ago that flags were at half-staff for a president who served before most of us were…

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series of columns looking at American history from the perspective of a presidential historian and a museum archivist. “My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.”   Such is the start of one of my favorite works of American literature,…