History’s enduring presence

On May 25, 2025, Harrison Ruffin Tyler died at the ripe old age of 96. Astute readers will immediately recognize the surname of the deceased as that of our tenth president, John Tyler of Virginia. Harrison Tyler (1928 –2025) was the grandson of President John Tyler (1790 –1862). You read that right: the grandson, not the great or great-great grandson. John Tyler had fifteen children late in life, and his son Lyon (1853 –1935) saw Harrison born when he was 75. Thus, three generations of Tylers span 230 years, a remarkable fact upon reflection that the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary next year.

It is easy to say that America is a young country, but when we consider America’s national youth through the lives of particular people like Harrison Tyler, it really brings the idea home. While not everyone finds memorizing names, dates, and place names on a map easy or pleasant, we can all relate to stories of actual everyday people and families. Many of us had poor history teachers who taught the subject only through a battery of gotcha questions mixed in with heavy doses of references to popular (and inaccurate) films like The Patriot. I had a history teacher in high school who taught each class solely by reading from the textbook and then having us write detailed outlines of the book chapters. Subjected to her droning in monotone as she read page after page, day after day, we were of all students most to be pitied. It was an agonizing, spirit-crushing experience. Bad history teachers who neither see nor teach the relevance of history to our lives abound. No wonder a lot of people learn to hate history in their formative years!

When I ask students about whether they enjoy the study of the past, many respond by indicating they find history entertaining, but struggle to see how it matters. After all, who doesn’t love a good historical movie or documentary? But what does the First Battle of Finisterre or the Marburg Colloquy have to do with the events and problems of contemporary America? You would be hard pressed to find someone who can satisfactorily explain why the Treaty of Tordesillas has any relevance to today’s world in the slightest. Or to put it bluntly—who cares if Søren Kierkegaard married Regine Olsen or not?

When considering the relevance of the past to our contemporary times, the first question we can ask is this—when we hear that Harrison Tyler, the grandson of President John Tyler whose presidency ended in 1845, just died at the age of 96, do we sit up and take note? If so, how might we explain the source of our interest in that story? Finally, does it matter that America is such a young country, or is that fact merely a fascinating tidbit of trivia?

Harrison Tyler’s death has been all over the news and social media outlets for the past several days, demonstrating that many people do, in fact, have an interest in his story. That means, for many if not most people, history means more than dry-as-dust facts from a multiple-choice quiz from high school. That is because God made us all in His image, thus, He gave us a consciousness of past, present, and future time. God gave us the ability to know our place in time, and to measure the passage of time because He placed the sun, moon, and the stars in the heavens above as time’s infallible markers (Genesis 1:14). We were created with, what historian John Lukacs called, a “historical consciousness.” None of us can resist the urge to think historically. A historical consciousness is one of the unique features of our having been specially made in the image of God.

And yes, it matters a great deal that America is a young country. The fact that there is a family in Virginia who can reach back only three generations to George Washington’s presidency is astounding. More significantly, by the story of the Tyler family, we are reminded that America is an experiment in democratic-republicanism, and that experiment is still being tested. The question of whether or not Americans can govern themselves freely under a just government remains open. Our nation’s youth and inexperience, demonstrated in the story of the Tyler family, ought to give us pause when we are tempted to think our national career is on an upward trajectory toward glory and success in freedom and right order.

The past is a source of wisdom for those who would seek to make sense of it through the study of history. Those who reject or ignore the past exist in perpetual moral pettiness. In the first century B.C., the Roman writer Cicero said, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” Solomon wrote in Proverbs 12:1, “Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, But he who hates correction is stupid.” When we study the past, we receive the wealth of wisdom for our churches, our nation, our families, and ourselves.