7 January: Millard Fillmore

This date in 1800 was the birth date of the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in a log cabin in the Finger Lakes region of New York. He was the second of eight children. He was given the name Millard because it was his mother’s maiden name. The family weren’t well off and he was persuaded, at 14, to leave school, not enlist in the army and to start work as apprentice to a clothmaker.

2. In due course, his parents realised he could do much better and managed to get him a job working for their landlord, Judge Walter Wood, as a law clerk. Fillmore worked as a teacher so that he could buy out his apprenticeship. His job as a law clerk only lasted 18 months, because he fell out with his boss after he’d advised a farmer in a law suit without Wood’s help. Wood tried to persuade him not to act unaided again, but Fillmore refused and quit. He went back to teaching and taking on small law cases which didn’t require him to be fully qualified.

3. He moved to Buffalo the following year and continued his study of law. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar. One of his teachers was a lady called Abigail Powers, who was just two years older than he was. They bonded over a mutual love of learning, fell in love and married in 1826.

4. He declined offers from the law firms in Buffalo, preferring to move to a small town and work independently as the only lawyer in town. He also claimed he didn’t feel confident enough to practice in a larger place.

5. Six years later, Fillmore was elected to the New York State Assembly and then to Congress where he served for ten years. He was comptroller of New York from 1848 until he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate under Zachary Taylor. He became president when Taylor died in office in 1850 and never gave an inaugural address.

6. Fillmore and his wife established the first White House library, and Abigail had the first "running-water Bathtub" installed.

7. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party and also the last not to be either a republican or a Democrat. At the end of his term, he ran for a second term, though not as a Whig as the party had fallen apart by then. Instead he ran for the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing Party, having refused to join the republicans, and lost to James Buchanan.

8. Fillmore was the first president to return to private life without independent wealth or possession of a landed estate. He intended to go on a grand tour of the south with Abigail and then return to practising law. The plans were scuppered, however, when Abigail died of pneumonia. A year later his daughter died of cholera. Eventually he re-married, a rich widow called Caroline McIntosh, which meant he no longer needed to work and the couple could concentrate on entertaining and supporting philanthropic causes like the Buffalo General Hospital, which he helped found.

9. Historians don’t rank him very highly. He has been described as weak and inept, trying to please everyone and not handling the slavery issue very well. Fillmore's name has become a byword in popular culture for easily forgotten and inconsequential presidents.

10. Millard Fillmore is one of two presidents who has double letters in his first and last names, the other is William H Harrison.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/