First Generation
1. President
Millard Fillmore 1,2 was
born on 7 Jan 1800 in Locke, Cayuga, New York. He died3,4 on 8 Mar 1874 in Buffalo New York. The cause of death was stroke. He was buried
in Forest Lawn Cem., Buffalo New York.
Millard was born5 on 7 Jan 1800 in Locke New York. He was born
on 7 Jan 1800 in Locke, Cayuga, New York. He died on 8 Mar 1874 in Buffalo, New
York. He died on 8 Mar 1874 in Buffalo, New York. He died on 8 Mar 1874 in
Buffalo, Erie, New York. He was employed as 13th Presdent.
In his rise from a log cabin to
wealth and the White House, Millard Fillmore demonstrated that through
methodical industry and some
competence an uninspiring man could make the American dream come
true.
Born in the Finger Lakes country of
New York in 1800, Fillmore as a youth endured the privations of
frontier life. He worked on his
father's farm, and at 15 was apprenticed to a cloth dresser. He attended
one-room schools, and fell in love
with the redheaded teacher, Abigail Powers, who later became his
wife.
In 1823 he was admitted to the bar;
seven years later he moved his law practice to Buffalo. As an
associate of the Whig politician
Thurlow Weed, Fillmore held state office and for eight years was a
member of the House of
Representatives. In 1848, while Comptroller of New York, he was elected Vice
President.
Fillmore presided over the Senate
during the months of nerve-wracking debates over the Compromise of
1850. He made no public comment on
the merits of the compromise proposals, but a few days before
President Taylor's death, he
intimated to him that if there should be a tie vote on Henry Clay's bill, he
would vote in favor of it.
Thus the sudden accession of Fillmore
to the Presidency in July 1850 brought an abrupt political shift in
the administration. Taylor's Cabinet
resigned and President Fillmore at once appointed Daniel Webster
to be Secretary of State, thus
proclaiming his alliance with the moderate Whigs who favored the
Compromise.
A bill to admit California still
aroused all the violent arguments for and against the extension of slavery,
without any progress toward settling
the major issues.
Clay, exhausted, left Washington to
recuperate, throwing leadership upon Senator Stephen A. Douglas
of Illinois. At this critical
juncture, President Fillmore announced in favor of the Compromise. On August
6, 1850, he sent a message to
Congress recommending that Texas be paid to abandon her claims to
part of New Mexico.
This helped influence a critical
number of northern Whigs in Congress away from their insistence upon
the Wilmot Proviso--the stipulation
that all land gained by the Mexican War must be closed to slavery.
Douglas's effective strategy in
Congress combined with Fillmore's pressure from the White House to give
impetus to the Compromise movement.
Breaking up Clay's single legislative package, Douglas
presented five separate bills to the
Senate:
Admit California as a free state.
Settle the Texas boundary and
compensate her.
Grant territorial status to New
Mexico.
Place Federal officers at the
disposal of slaveholders seeking fugitives.
Abolish the slave trade in the
District of Columbia.
Each measure obtained a majority, and
by September 20, President Fillmore had signed them into law.
Webster wrote, "I can now sleep
of nights."
Some of the more militant northern
Whigs remained irreconcilable, refusing to forgive Fillmore for having
signed the Fugitive Slave Act. They
helped deprive him of the Presidential nomination in 1852.
Within a few years it was apparent
that although the Compromise had been intended to settle the
slavery controversy, it served rather
as an uneasy sectional truce.
As the Whig Party disintegrated in
the 1850's, Fillmore refused to join the Republican Party; but, instead,
in 1856 accepted the nomination for
President of the Know Nothing, or American, Party. Throughout the
Civil War he opposed President
Lincoln and during Reconstruction supported President Johnson. He
died in 1874.
Millard married Abigail Powers on 5 Feb 1826 in Moravia, Cayuga, New York.
Abigail was born on 13 Mar 1798 in Stillwater, Saratoga Co, New York. She died
on 30 Mar 1853 in Washington, Dc.
Abigail was born on 13 Mar 1798 in
Stillwater, New York. She was born on 13 Mar 1798 in Stillwater, Saratoga, New
York. She died on 30 Mar 1853 in Wa. She died on 30 Mar 1853 in Washington, Dc.
Sources
1. David
Williamson, Debrett's Presidents of the United States of America, Salem House
Publishers 1989 ISBN 0-88162-366-0.
2. William
Addams Reitwiesner , Presidential Candidates Ancestry
Homepage, http://members.aol.com/wreitwiesn/candidates2000/.
3. David
Williamson, Debrett's Presidents of the United States of America.
4. William
A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (Gramercy Books 2001 ISBN 0-517-08244-6).
5. David
Williamson, Debrett's Presidents of the United States of America.