Tag: William Henry Harrison

On a Curse

I don’t believe in curses. Cursing–yes, but curses, no. However, some events and occurrences seem to be more than mere coincidences. There’s the supposed curse of King Tut’s Tomb; several people associated with the discovery of that important archaeological site are supposed to have died under mysterious circumstances. There’s the Hope Diamond curse that says people associated with that famous jewel also either received terrible luck afterward or perished under strange conditions. Then there’s the curse of Tenskwatawa.

Tenskwatawa was a Native American religious leader or holy man. He made prophecies regarding his tribe, the Shawnee, as the American government made increasingly aggressive moves into Shawnee territory in the earl 1800s. The horrible history of how the American nation broke treaty after treaty with native tribes is the stuff of volumes of books and dissertations. However, for our purposes, please know that Tenskwatawa led a movement, along with his brother, to fight the American aggression.

Tenskwatawa’s message to his tribe was that they should not only fight against the Americans, but that they should also reject American culture and practices. In many ways, his preaching was a native conservative reaction to the changes that were taking place in Shawnee culture during that period. He advocated a return to Shawnee traditions and practices that would somehow channel, Tenskwatawa said, the sprits of their ancestors to defeat the encroaching Americans.

The Shawnee went to war. Led by Tenskwatawa and his brother, and joined by other native tribes who shared the Shawnee anger at the American lies and treachery, the natives made several attacks on American outposts on the frontier. The American governor of the Indiana Territory, Governor William Harrison, asked for and received permission to move against the native confederated forces. Governor Harrison believed that the only way to treat the natives was by a show of strength. In the fall of 1811, the two sides met in battle in what is now northwestern Indiana.

The native alliance lost the battle, and many historians point to this as a turning point in the dissolution of the native resistance movement east of the Mississippi River. Tenkswatawa’s reputation suffered, and his brother was killed in battle against the Americans two years later. You know that brother: Tecumseh.

And Governor Harrison parlayed his victory over Tenskwatawa into a later political career. He became known as Old Tippecanoe–the name by which the battle came to be known. Harrison ran for President in 1840 with John Tyler as his running mate under the slogan, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!” and won the election. However, only a few weeks after being sworn in, Harrison died. Some people whispered that the President’s death was due to a curse put on him by Tenskwatawa. The prophet’s anger at the loss of the battle and the destruction of his alliance and movement is said to have been the reason he summoned the curse on his victorious foe.

In fact, the curse was supposed to have been on Harrison and all like him who were elected in years ending in ‘0’ such as Harrison had been in 1840.

That’s laughable, right?

Well, after Harrison, the next president elected in a year ending in 0 was Abraham Lincoln in 1860. After that, James Garfield won in 1880. Garfield, too, was assassinated. Then, in 1900, William McKinley was re-elected–and was shot to death a year later. Warren Harding, who won election in 1920, died from mysterious circumstances in 1923. When Franklin Roosevelt died in 1945, people noticed that he, too, was elected in 1940 and died in office. Finally, John Kennedy, who won his term in 1960…well, you know what happened there.

But then, this supposed curse simply…ends. Ronald Reagan, first elected in 1980, was shot while in office but survived. George W. Bush, elected in 2000, had a grenade thrown at him in 2005, but the device failed to detonate. And Joe Biden, elected in 2020?

Perhaps Tenskwatawa’s wrath is slaked.

On a Stolen Corpse

This story comes to us from our friend, Brian Kannard. Brian wrote a pretty interesting book a few years ago: Skullduggery: 45 True Tales of Disturbing the Dead. In this book, as the title suggests, you can find stories about corpses that were dug up, disturbed, held for ransom, and otherwise disrespected. The tales concern the famous and the not so famous.

One of Brian’s tales that has stuck with me concerns the grave robbery that took place in Ohio back in the late 1870s. Now, you have to remember that, back then, medical schools did not have a system for receiving cadavers for their students to use to learn about human anatomy. They turned, macabrely, to corpse snatchers. These nefarious characters made their living by digging up freshly buried bodies and selling them to the medical schools.

At the funeral of a man named John, the family realized that one of John’s nephew’s graves had been disturbed. The nephew had been buried a few days prior to John’s burial, and the family was horrified to learn that the younger man’s body was missing. One of John’s sons, also named John, told his brothers, Ben and Carter, that they should place large stones on top of their departed’s grave to insure that no one could steal the deceased John’s body. Then, John and another cousin traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, to go to the medical school to look for the body of their cousin there.

At the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati, John spoke to the janitor who answered John’s questions in a non-committal way. Of course, the school paid for an accepted cadavers, but the man didn’t want to admit that he knew the bodies had been stolen when they purchased them. John noticed that the dumbwaiter door in one of the operating rooms was open and that the rope was taught. “What’s on the end of that rope? Pull it up!” John demanded. The janitor demurred. So, John took it upon himself to work the pulley and bring up the very heavy object on the other end.

The body on the end of the rope was covered with a canvas sheet. John and his cousin removed the rope and brought the body onto one of the examining tables in the operating room. He pulled the sheet back and expected to see the face of his recently dead cousin.

“Oh, my God!” John said. “It’s Father!”

Somehow, in the past 24 hours, grave robbers had exhumed the body of John’s father and brought it to Cincinnati. The janitor was arrested on suspicion of purchasing and/or handling a stolen body. However, it was impossible to prove that the man was the one who arranged for the purchase or even received possession of the body, so the charges were eventually dropped. Interestingly, one of the doctors at the medical school had served directly under another of John’s sons, Ben, in the American Civil War.

Well, the public was outraged. The dead man was well known in the country, and a broad-based campaign was waged to make grave robbing a major felony. Several states in the mid-west passed such legislation in he ensuing months and years, and a system of receiving the bodies of indigent persons and voluntary donation of cadavers for use in medical study was established. By the way, the cousin’s body was later found in the medical school of the University of Michigan. But it was the theft of the body of John Scott Harrison that caused those laws to be passed.

So, who was he?

Well, it’s not really John that you know. However, you know John’s father, William Henry Harrison, the 9th President of the United States, and you know John’s son, Ben–Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States.