January 4, 1787: Birthday of Rutherford Hayes, Presidential Father

George W. Bush has been called many things, but he’s indisputably one of the few presidents whose father lived long enough to see him become president. The only other president who sired another president, John Adams, died famously on July 4, 1826, nearly simultaneously with Thomas Jefferson, living just long enough to see son John Quincy Adams take up his former position in 1825.

Otherwise, only a handful of other presidential fathers lived to see their sons’ inaugurations: Fillmore, Grant, Harding, Coolidge and Kennedy. (In Coolidge’s case, his father John Coolidge, a justice of the peace, swore him in upon word of President Harding’s death.)

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (pictured in his Union army days), 19th president and beneficiary of the Stolen Election of 1876, is at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of paternal longevity. He was the posthumous son of Rutherford Hayes, an Ohio storekeeper who had moved there from his native Vermont. The elder Hayes was born on January 4, 1787, and died July 20, 1822 -- a few months before the future president was born on October 4. Only two other future presidents were born posthumously: Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton.