William Henry Harrison Sr. was an American military officer, politician, and 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 constitutional crisis and questions and debates about the U.S. Presidential line of succession.
Harrison was a son of Founding Father Benjamin Harrison V and the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States . He was the last president born as a British royal subject in the original Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution .
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 , 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 Democrat 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 sworn in as president until Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981 and later Donald Trump's inauguration 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.
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9. February 1773 – 4. April 1841
