Ninth President of the United States / William Henry Harrison / 9 President America

William Henry Harrison Sr. (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. He died of pneumonia thirty-one days into his term, thereby serving the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. Because he was the first president to die in office, his death sparked a brief constitutional crisis and questions and debates about the presidential line of succession.Born: February 9, 1773, Berkeley Plantation, Virginia, United States. Died: April 4, 1841, The White House, Washington, D.C., United States. Presidential term: March 4, 1841 – April 4, 1841 Vice president: John Tyler (1841) Nicknames: General Mum, Van Ruin, Old Tippecanoe, Tippecanoe, Old Granny, The Cincinnatus of the West, Washington of the West Children: John Scott Harrison, William Henry Harrison Jr,

Harrison was a son of Benjamin Harrison V (one of the Founding Fathers) and the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States (1889–1893). He was the last president born as a British royal subject in the original Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution started in 1775.

Harrison was the first member elected to the United States House of Representatives from the Northwest Territory, and later was the first governor of the Indiana Territory. He famously led U.S. military and state militia forces against Native Americans at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". He was promoted to major general in the regular United States Army in the subsequent War of 1812 (1812-1815), and served in the Battle of the Thames in Canada the following year. After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected again to the House of Representatives. In 1824, the state legislature elected him to the United States Senate; his term was truncated by his appointment as Minister Plenipotentiary to Gran Colombia in May 1828.

Harrison returned to private life in Ohio until 1836, when he was nominated for the presidency as the Whig Party candidate in the election of that year; he was defeated by Democratic Vice President Martin Van Buren. In 1840, the Party nominated Harrison again, with John Tyler as his running mate. Harrison and Tyler, known famously as "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", defeated Van Buren in the 1840 election. Harrison was the oldest person to be elected president until Ronald Reagan in 1981 and later Donald Trump in 2017. Harrison died of pneumonia a month after taking office, and Tyler assumed the presidency, setting a major precedent in succession. Due to Harrison's brief time in office, scholars and historians often forgo listing this president in historical rankings.

Early life and education William Henry Harrison, the seventh and youngest child of Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth (Bassett) Harrison, was born on February 9, 1773, at Berkeley Plantation, the Harrison family home along the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. He was a member of a prominent political family of English descent, whose ancestors had been in Virginia since the 1630s. Harrison was the last U.S. president born as a British subject before the American Revolution. His father was a Virginia planter who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) and who signed the Declaration of Independence. The senior Harrison also served in the Virginia legislature, and as the fifth governor of Virginia (1781–84) in the years during and after the American Revolutionary War. William's older brother, Carter Bassett Harrison, represented Virginia in the U.S. House (1793–99).

Harrison was tutored at home until age fourteen when he entered Hampden–Sydney College, a Presbyterian college in Virginia. He studied there for three years, receiving a classical education that included Latin, Greek, French, logic, and debate. Harrison's Episcopalian father removed him from the college, possibly for religious reasons, and he briefly attended a boys' academy in Southampton County, before being transferred to Philadelphia in 1790. He boarded with Robert Morris and entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied medicine under Doctor Benjamin Rush. Harrison later told his biographer that he did not enjoy the subject. In the spring of 1791, shortly after he began his medical studies, his father died. When the eighteen-year-old Harrison, who was left in the guardianship of Morris, discovered that his family's financial situation left him without funds for further schooling, he abandoned medical school in favor of a military career.

Early military career 

Governor Henry Lee III of Virginia, a friend of Harrison's father, learned of William's situation and persuaded him to join the military. Within twenty-four hours of meeting Lee, eighteen-year-old Harrison was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Army, 1st Infantry Regiment. He was initially assigned to Fort Washington, the present-day site of Cincinnati, in the Northwest Territory, where the army was engaged in the ongoing Northwest Indian War.

Harrison was promoted to lieutenant after Major General "Mad Anthony" Wayne took command of the western army in 1792 following a disastrous defeat under Arthur St. Clair, its previous commander. In 1793 he became Wayne's aide-de-camp and learned how to successfully command an army on the American frontier; he participated in Wayne's decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, which brought the Northwest Indian War to a successful close.Harrison was a signatory of the Treaty of Greenville (1795) as witness to Wayne, the principal negotiator for the U.S.. Under the terms of the treaty, a coalition of Native Americans ceded a portion of their lands to the federal government that opened two-thirds of present-day Ohio to settlement by European Americans. Following his mother's death in 1793, Harrison inherited a portion of his family's Virginia estate, including approximately 3,000 acres (12 km2) of land and several slaves. Harrison, who was serving in the army at the time, sold his land to his brother.