Nathaniel Fillmore

Nathaniel Fillmore Jr. was born in Bennington, Vermont on April 19, 1771, a son of Nathaniel Fillmore Sr. and Hepzibah Wood. He was educated in Bennington, and worked on his father's farm as a young man. After his marriage, Fillmore began farming in Bennington. Shortly thereafter, Nathaniel and his brother Calvin Fillmore were approached by land agents offering tracts in Western New York state. Unhappy with trying to make the stony ground of their Vermont farms productive, they quickly grabbed the opportunity and moved to Cayuga County, New York, sight unseen. ==Move to New York==

According to biographers of Millard Fillmore, "The Fillmore brothers moved their two families to their new homeland nestled deep within a timber-laden forest. Location was not their greatest problem. Nor was the dense clay they unearthed once the land was cleared. Their greatest setback came with the realization that faulty surveying coupled with corrupt local government officials had left them with virtually nothing." The Fillmore brothers lost their land because of defective titles. Duped, tired, and poor, Nathaniel eventually became a tenant farmer while occasionally teaching school, working the soil for landlords and taking their charity when necessary to survive. While living in Niles, Fillmore followed his wife's advice to secure a clerk’s position for their son Millard in the law office of their landlord, Judge Walter Wood. ==Later life==

Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency in 1850, and Nathaniel visited him at the White House in 1851. President Fillmore and his wife anticipated this visit more than any other, and were concerned that some circumstance requiring Fillmore's attention might prevent it. The other guests at the formal reception Nathaniel Fillmore attended expected to see someone elderly and infirm, given that Millard Fillmore was then 51 years old. They were surprised to meet a man, then approaching 80, who noticeably resembled Millard Fillmore, and was in such good health that he did not appear old enough to be the president's father. Questioned by a guest who wanted to know how to raise a son to become president, Nathaniel Fillmore alluded to his one-time poverty by replying "Cradle him in a sap trough." ==Death and burial==

Fillmore died in East Aurora, New York on March 28, 1863. ==Family==

In 1796, the 25 year-old Fillmore married fifteen year-old Phoebe Millard, daughter of a prominent physician, in Bennington. Together, they had nine children: • Olive Fillmore (1797–1883) • Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) • Cyrus Fillmore (1801–1889) • Almon Fillmore (1806–1830) • Calvin Fillmore (1810–1879) • Julia Fillmore (1812–1891) • Darius Fillmore (1814–1837) • Charles Fillmore (1817–1854) • Phoebe Fillmore (1819–1843) After Phoebe died in 1831, he remarried to Eunice Love in 1834. == Notes ==