President Harding's Love Child

choi

Peter Baker, Test Results Are in: at Long Last, the Secret About Harding are out; Shedding light on a Roaring Twenties sensation, and rewriting history. New York Times, Aug 13, 2015 (front page).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/1 ... ings-love-life.html

“It was not the first time a president was accused of an extracurricular love life, but never before had a self-proclaimed presidential mistress gone public with a popular tell-all book.

Note:
(a) "She was * * * shamed for waging a 'diabolical' campaign of falsehoods"

diabolical (adj; from Latin noun masculine diabolus devil, from Ancient Greek diábolos)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diabolus
(b) Nan Britton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Britton
(born Nan P Britton; nickname Nanny; 1896 – 1991)

(c) Warren G Harding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding
(1865 – 1923; president 1921 -1923; died of a cerebral hemorrhage; Republican; Vice President  Calvin Coolidge [who succeeded him as president]; Preceded by Woodrow Wilson)

Quote:

"Harding first came to know Florence Kling [1860 – 1924], five years older than himself, as the daughter of a local banker and developer. Amos Kling was a man accustomed to getting his way, but Harding attacked him relentlessly in the paper. * * * After she eloped with Pete deWolfe, and returned to Marion without deWolfe but with an infant called Marshall, Amos agreed to raise the boy but would not support Florence, who made a living as a piano teacher. One of her students was Harding's sister Charity. By 1886, Florence Kling had obtained a divorce, and she and Warren Harding were courting, though who was pursuing whom is uncertain, depending on who later told the story of their romance.

"Harding had an extramarital affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips of Marion, which lasted about fifteen years before ending in 1920. Letters from Harding to Phillips were discovered by Harding biographer Francis Russell in the possession of Marion attorney Donald Williamson while Russell was researching his book in 1963. Before that, the affair was not generally known. Williamson donated the letters to the Ohio Historical Society. Some there wanted the letters destroyed to preserve what remained of Harding's reputation. A lawsuit ensued, with Harding's heirs claiming copyright over the letters. The case was ultimately settled in 1971, with the letters donated to the Library of Congress. They were sealed until 2014, but before their opening, historians used copies at Case Western Reserve University and in Russell's papers at the University of Wyoming. Russell concluded from the letters that Phillips was the love of Harding's life — 'the enticements of his mind and body combined in one person,' but historian Justin P Coffey in his 2014 review of Harding biographies criticizes him [Russell] for 'obsess[ing] over Harding's sex life.' “  (the second sets of brackets in original)

* “They were sealed until 2014.”  This clause echoes a sentence in the NYT report: “The Library of Congress effectively recalled it last year when it released Harding’s love letters with another mistress, Carrie Phillips.


(d) “ 'It’s sort of Shakespearean and operatic,' said Dr Peter Harding, a grandnephew of the president and one of those who instigated the DNA testing that confirmed the relationship to Ms Britton’s offspring. * * * 'My father said this [a love child] couldn’t have happened because President Harding had mumps as a kid and was infertile and the family really vilified Nan Britton,' said Dr Harding * * * Dr Harding and his cousin, Abigail Harding, decided to pursue the matter and made contact with James Blaesing, a grandson of Ms Britton and son of the daughter she claimed to have conceived with the president [by testing DNA]."

Because the president did not officially have a child, the matter fell on people like Harding's "grandnephew."
(e) "Testing by AncestryDNA, a division of Ancestry.com, the genealogical website, found that Mr Blaesing was a second cousin to Peter and Abigail Harding, meaning that Elizabeth Ann Blaesing had to be President Harding’s daughter."

cousin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin
(First cousins share grandparents; Second cousins share great grandparents)
(f) "Warren Gamaliel Harding was a newspaper publisher in Marion, Ohio"

Marion, Ohio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion,_Ohio
(Like the county [of the same name] in which it is located, the city was named in honor for General Francis Marion)