President Benjamin Harrison and Our Three Vice Presidents

Crown Hill is the final resting place of one U.S. President and three U.S. Vice Presidents. No other cemetery has more. It was not unusual in the decades around the turn of the 20th Century for a man from Indiana to be paired as vice presidential candidate with a presidential candidate from the east coast. In fact, in addition to our three vice presidents, the unsuccessful Democratic candidates in 1880 and 1908 are also buried here. As we remember President Harrison in this, the month of his birthday, we’ll also highlight those who served in our country’s second highest office.

Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 - March 13, 1901)
23rd President of the United States, serving with Vice President Levi P. Morton
In office March 4, 1889 – March 4, 1893

Indiana’s most successful politician in terms of the office he attained, America’s 23rd President, Benjamin Harrison also had one of its best political pedigrees. Born in North Bend, Ohio, in 1833, Harrison was the son of John Scott Harrison, a two-term congressman from Ohio; the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, who had earlier served as Governor of the Indiana Territory; and the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas A. Hendricks (September 7, 1819 – November 25, 1885)
21st Vice President of the United States under President Grover Cleveland
In office January 13, 1873 – November 25, 1885

Thomas Andrews Hendricks was born in Zanesville, Ohio, but his parents soon moved to Indiana where his uncle, William Hendricks, was the state’s first U.S. Representative, the second elected Governor, and a U.S. Senator from 1835-1837. Hendricks attended Hanover College, passed the bar, began his law practice and married Eliza Morgan. Their only child, a son named Morgan, was born in 1848 but died in 1851.

Charles Warren Fairbanks (May 11, 1852 – June 4, 1918)
26th Vice President of the United States under President Theodore Roosevelt
In office March 4, 1905 – March 4, 1909

Born near Columbus, Ohio, Fairbanks and his wife, Cornelia Cole, moved to Indianapolis when he took a position as a lawyer for a railroad company. He developed this into a lucrative practice, specializing in transportation and corporate affairs, especially those of bankrupt railroads.

Thomas Marshall (March 14, 1854 – June 1, 1925)
28th Vice President of the United States under President Woodrow Wilson
In office March 4, 1913 – March 4, 1921 (Two terms)

After Thomas Marshall was born in northern Indiana, his parents began moving westward, seeking a series of hopefully better climates to relieve his mother’s tuberculosis. While living in Illinois, the family was present at one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the two rivals actually took turns holding the young Thomas. Barely recalling the incident, Marshall later wrote: “It pleases me to think that perhaps in a small way something of the love of Lincoln and of Douglas for the Union, the Constitution, and the rights of the common man flowed into my childish veins.”

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