This coming Monday we celebrate Presidents’ Day, which honors the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both born in February. On Presidents’ Day we reflect on the lives and legacies of all our 44 American presidents. Note that I have spelled the name of this federal holiday “Presidents’ Day,” not “President’s Day.” Why? Because the day salutes all our presidents.

Seven presidents elected at intervals of 20 years died in office — William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840), Abraham Lincoln (1860), James Garfield (1880), William McKinley (1900), Warren Harding (1920), Franklin Roosevelt (1940), and John F. Kennedy (1960).

First noted in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book published in 1934, this string of untimely presidential deaths is variously known as the curse of Tippecanoe, the zero-year curse, the twenty-year curse, and Tecumseh’s curse, Tecumseh being the chief of the Shawnee Nation defeated by William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 and shot by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981, almost continued the deadly sequence but survived and broke the pattern.

The more we delve into the lives of our American presidents, the more we see patterns that connect their feats, their fates, and their families:
Except for Barack Obama, the publicly acknowledged ancestry of our 45 presidents has been limited to seven heritages or some combination thereof — Dutch, English, German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh. Barack Obama was our first president of African heritage, the son of a Kenyan father.

A significant number of our presidents have been related. John Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams and George H. W. Bush the father of George W. Bush. William Henry Harrison was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison. James Madison and Zachary Taylor were second cousins. And genealogists have determined that Franklin Roosevelt was a fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and related to 11 other presidents by blood or marriage. That’s more than half our presidents closely or distantly related.

Virginia is the birth state the greatest number of our presidents, including seven of the first 12 — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Zachary Taylor, as well as Woodrow Wilson. Three of those presidents — Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe — served two terms consecutively, a pattern repeated only once: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Ohio is known as the “Mother of Presidents” because eight American presidents were born or lived in Ohio — William Henry Harrison (who lived there when he was elected), Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren Harding.

Five candidates for president — Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel J. Tilden (1876), Grover Cleveland (1888), Al Gore (2000), and Hillary Clinton (2016) — won the popular vote but lost the election in the Electoral College. In other words, more than 10% of our presidents have not been elected by a majority of our voters:
All five of the above candidates who lost the presidency were Democrats.

One striking pattern of the American presidency is that no woman has occupied that office. It’s not that they haven’t tried:
In 1872, more than 150 years ago, Virginia Woodhull, an activist in the suffrage movement, became the first woman to run for president as a member of the National Equal Rights Party.

Following the path that Woodhull blazed, other notable women also became candidates for the presidency, including Belva Lockwood (National Equal Rights Party – 1884 and 1888), Shirley Chisholm (Democrat – 1972) – first Black major-party candidate, Hillary Clinton (Democrat – 2008 and 2016) – first woman  nominated by a major party, Nikki Hailey (Republican – 2024), and Kamala Harris (Democrat – 2020 and  2024).

Since World War II, no major party has held the presidency for more than two consecutive terms, with the exception of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, 1981-1993.

Two presidents have been elected nonsequentially — Grover Cleveland, 1884 and 1892, and Donald Trump, 2016 and 2024. As a result, Donald Trump is the 45th man to be elected president but is our 47th president.

***

I grew up in Philadelphia, so I was delighted that the Eagles (we Philadelphians call them “Iggles”) pummeled the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl 40-22. Can you spot my pun in the following headline?: EAGLES FOOTBALL TEAM LIX KANSAS CITY.