For Throwback Thursday, we’re heading back to the Roaring Twenties, since there has been a fascinating breakthrough. DNA evidence appears to prove that President Warren G. Harding really did have a love child with Nan Blaesing.
It was rumored that Harding, who was in office from 1921 until his death in 1923, had a love child with Blaesing, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, but that had never been confirmed until now. According to The New York Times, Ancestry.com division AncestryDNA has done DNA tests that prove that Elizabeth Ann was Harding’s daughter.
“It’s sort of Shakespearean and operatic,” Dr. Peter Harding, one of Harding’s grandnephews and a physician in California, told the Times. “This story hangs over the whole presidential history because it was an unsolved mystery.”
While there had been rumors that other presidents had extramarital affairs, Harding’s affair with Blaesing had captured the public’s attention like none other before because she wrote a book called The President’s Daughter. Some historians had dismissed the book, but the rumor had always hung around. It came up when President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed and was even a Boardwalk Empire subplot.
Peter Harding said that the family tried to cover up all possibility that Harding had a love child by insisting that he was sterile. Indeed, Harding did not have any children with his wife.
Despite the evidence, not all members of the Harding family are completely convinced. Dr. Richard Harding, a child psychiatrist in South Carolina and another grandnephew, told the Times he thinks there is testing still to be done. Still, he would welcome members of the Blaesing family.
“I hope they’ll find their new place in history is meaningful and productive for them,” Richard Harding said.
The DNA testing also found that Harding did have any African ancestry, notes Vanity Fair. That was another rumor that dogged Harding during his career.
This news at least makes Harding somewhat interesting now. He is widely considered one of the worst presidents in American history, thanks to his corruption-plagued administration. He even once said, “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”