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Elizabeth Ann Blaesing




Britton, who made her claim public with the publication of her book, '' The President's Daughter '' (Elizabeth Ann Guild, 1927 ), could never produce primary source evidence to prove that Harding acknowledged his paternity of the child.

Initially given to her aunt and uncle, Scott and Elizabeth Willets in Illinois to be raised, Britton took the young Elizabeth Ann back once her book was published. Elizabeth Ann graduated from Sullivan High School in Evanston, Illinois ; later she married Henry Blaesing on September 18 , 1938 , in Chicago . At the time Nan Britton began a series of newspaper interviews discussing Elizabeth Ann (referring to her as "Ann Harding") and her marriage, but refusing to provide the name of her husband.

While raising her sons in Glendale, California in 1964 , the matter of Harding’s alleged paternity of Elizabeth Ann was again brought to the forefront when a series of lawsuits in Ohio involving the ownership of love letters written by Harding to his late mistress Carrie Phillips were taking place. In an Associated Press wire service article distributed in mid-July of that year, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing confirmed publicly that in 1934 her mother had told her that Warren G. Harding was her biological father. "It's not something that you bring up in casual conversation," she stated in the story.

When contacted by Harding scholar, Dr. Robert H. Ferrell, author of ''The Strange Deaths of President Harding'' and later by John Dean , author of ''Warren Harding, The American President Series'', Blaesing refused interviews on the topic.

As of September 30 , 2005 , Mrs. Elizabeth Blaesing was living in Washington , and her biological relationship to President Harding is still legally undetermined.

If Mrs. Blaesing is, in fact, President Harding's daughter, then she became, with the 1995 death of Francis Cleveland , the oldest living child of a President; if not, then retired Army General and former Ambassador John Eisenhower holds this distinction. Also, it would make Harding (since Francis Cleveland's death) the earliest President to still have a living child; if not, then Harry Truman would be, through his daughter Margaret Truman , who is two years younger than John Eisenhower.


SOURCES

  • Associated Press Wire Service. ''Secret Kept for Twenty Years: California Woman Says She is Daughter of Harding''. Tri-City Herald, Pasco, Washington, p.15, July 17, 1964.

  • Dean, John; Schlesinger, Arthur M. ''Warren Harding'' (The American President Series), Times Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8050-6956-9

  • Ferrell, Robert H. ''The Strange Deaths of President Harding''. University of Missouri Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8262-1202-6

  • Mee, Charles Jr. ''The Ohio Gang: The World of Warren G. Harding: A Historical Entertainment'' M. Evans & Company, 1983. ISBN 0-8713-1340-5