A Confederate Catechism

Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born on August 24, 1853 at Sherwood Forest Plantation in what is now Charles City, Virginia. He was the thirteenth child of former U.S. President John Tyler and First Lady Julia Gardiner Tyler. Although he was still a young child when the War Between the States began in 1861, Tyler nevertheless developed his post-war zeal for the principles for which the South contended through the influence of his father, who was a member of the Confederate Congress and a staunch States rights advocate. Tyler graduated from the University of Virginia in 1875 and served as the seventeenth president of William and Mary College from 1888 to 1919, being credited for restoring the financial stability of the institution in the wake of the Civil War. Two of Tyler’s sons from his second marriage were still alive as of 2014, making their grandfather the earliest former President with living grandchildren. Tyler died on February 12, 1935 in Richmond, Virginia and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.