5 Imperfect Fathers Who Shaped Future Presidents

Often ranked among the least-accomplished presidents, Franklin Pierce boasted one of the most accomplished of presidential fathers, one who helped birth the country his son would one day lead.

When news of the battles at Lexington and Concord reached his Massachusetts farm, Benjamin Pierce abandoned his plow, grabbed a gun and joined patriot troops laying siege to Boston. He wouldn’t return home for more than seven years. General Pierce fought at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, endured Valley Forge’s harsh winter and guarded George Washington.

The Revolutionary War hero may never have envisioned his son becoming president like Washington, but Benjamin had high expectations for young Franklin. After moving to New Hampshire, Benjamin served as a state legislator and two-term governor. During Benajmin’s final term as the state’s chief executive, his Democratic Party political network aided Franklin’s election to the state legislature, a stepping stone to an eventual seat in the U.S. Congress. When the Mexican-American War erupted, Franklin emulated his father and abandoned his thriving law practice to volunteer for the army, despite his lack of military experience.

Benjamin died in 1839, more than a decade before his son won the White House. Franklin’s lifelong friend Nathaniel Hawthorne credited Benajmin with infusing his son with a patriotic and military spirit. “From infancy upward, the boy had before his eyes, as the model on which he might instinctively form himself, one of the best specimens of sterling New England character, developed in a life of simple habits, yet of elevated action,” Hawthorne wrote.

Abraham Lincoln was close to his mother and stepmother, but his relationship with his father was more complicated.

Born in Virginia, Thomas Lincoln struggled to scratch out a living on the frontier. As a boy working his family’s Kentucky cornfield, he watched in horror as Native American raiders killed his father.

After Abraham’s birth, Thomas moved the family to Indiana and Illinois in search of suitable farmland. Young Abe was more cerebral than his father, who reportedly struck his son and destroyed his books if he was more attentive to reading than his chores. While Thomas has been branded by some as a failure in business and fathering, other accounts describe him as a well-respected citizen who was active in his Baptist church and community affairs.

Although Abraham paid to keep his father from losing his Illinois homestead, some biographers point to the 16th president’s refusal to visit his dying father or attend his funeral as evidence of their frayed relationship. Abraham’s absence, though, could have been due to his need to care for his bedridden wife and newborn son Willie.

“No amount of conjecture can create circumstances in which Thomas Lincoln either inspired or positively influenced his son,” writes Harold Gullan in First Fathers: The Men Who Inspired Our Presidents. “There is not a single reference in all of Abraham Lincoln’s recorded recollections where he said anything favorable about his father.”

Even Lincoln family members struggled to characterize the bond between father and son. While cousin Dennis Hanks doubted if “Abe loved his father very well,” a step-granddaughter of Thomas said, “Uncle Abe got his honesty and his clean notions of living and kind heart from his father.”

Whatever the distance between the two, Abraham seemingly inherited his father’s melancholy and ability to tell a yarn. Like his son, Thomas often got the “blues” but could mesmerize audiences with his gift for weaving tales.

Unusually modest for a president, Ulysses S. Grant detested publicity and self-promotion. That was a problem with braggart Jesse Root Grant for a father.

Described by biographer Ron Chernow as “a self-assertive windbag,” Jesse had great ambitions for his eldest son. The ultimate presidential helicopter dad, Jesse regularly meddled in his son’s affairs. Without consulting Ulysses, he secured his son’s West Point appointment in hopes of giving him greater direction in life. When a depressed Ulysses resigned from the military in 1854, Jesse unsuccessfully lobbied Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to overturn the decision, fearing the future 18th president couldn’t succeed outside the military.

Not until the Civil War did Ulysses start to fulfill his father’s high expectations. When it came to his loose-lipped father, the general knew discretion remained the better part of valor. Ulysses never divulged troop movements to Jesse, knowing they would end up in print. When Jesse defended his son by disparaging other Union generals, a frustrated Ulysses exploded at his overprotective dad. “I have not an enemy in the world who has done me so much injury as you in your efforts in my defense,” he wrote. “I require no defenders and for my sake let me alone.”

To the general’s embarrassment, Jesse used his son’s postwar fame to promote his leather goods store and touted his presidential prospects to reporters. After Ulysses won the White House, Jesse regularly dropped in unannounced, neglecting his duties as a Kentucky postmaster and lobbying for jobs and favors for himself and others. Jesse died in 1873, several months after attending his son’s second inauguration.

Like father, like son. A great philanthropist and leading citizen of New York, Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was propelled by the same seemingly boundless energy as his eldest son. The aristocrat threw himself into charity work with what one friend called “maniacal benevolence.” Straddling Manhattan’s two worlds, Theodore would serve dinner to impoverished newsboys in full evening dress before rushing to Fifth Avenue galas.

The elder Roosevelt’s concern for the weak included frail Teddy, who suffered from asthma. To alleviate his son’s distress, Theodore carried the boy upright in his arms and took him for carriage rides through the Manhattan night to aid his sleep. “The thought of him now and always has been a sense of comfort,” Teddy later recalled. “I could breathe, I could sleep, when he had me in his arms. My father—he got me breath, he got me lungs, strength—life.”

Disregarding the advice of doctors who recommended Teddy not exert himself, Theodore prescribed a rigorous fitness regime to build his son’s strength, including boxing lessons to ward off bullies.

If there was one disappointment the younger Roosevelt had, it was that his father had avoided military service in the Civil War by paying a substitute—common practice at the time for young men of wealth. Teddy's mother came from southern heritage, which made the idea of her husband potentially killing her brothers a difficult one. Teddy would go on to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, going out of his way to prove his valor in combat as he helped lead the “Rough Riders” in their assault on Cuba’s San Juan Hill under heavy fire.

“My father,” Roosevelt nevertheless wrote, “was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness and great unselfishness.” Theodore’s death at age 46 devastated Teddy, a Harvard University student at the time. “I often feel badly that such a wonderful man as Father should have had a son of so little worth as I am,” Teddy despaired. “How I wish I could ever do something to keep up his name!” With his own remarkable life, Teddy did just that, and the 26th president told his sister he never made serious decisions in the White House without first considering what his father would have done.

The product of a close-knit family, young Gerald Ford Jr. had an idyllic upbringing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, living by three house rules: “Tell the truth, work hard and come to dinner on time.” Heavily involved in local Republican politics, Gerald Ford Sr. played catch with “Junior,” helped lead his Boy Scouts troop and attended his every football game.

But one day as the 15-year-old future president flipped burgers at a Greek diner, a customer upended his world with just five shocking words: “I’m Leslie King, your father.” The teenager had learned a few years earlier that Gerald Ford Sr. was actually his stepfather—but never knew his father’s identity or that his birth name was Leslie King, Jr.

Only 16 days after Gerald’s birth, his mother fled her hot-tempered, physically abusive husband when he threatened her and her newborn with a butcher knife. Following their divorce, the deeply indebted King refused to pay the $3,000 alimony and $25 monthly child support.

During their awkward encounter, Gerald refused King’s offer to live with him in Wyoming and received a $20 bill when he asked his biological father for financial assistance. “Nothing could erase the image I gained of my real father that day—a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son,” the 38th president recalled.

Luckily, Gerald’s relationship with his stepfather was the complete opposite. In 1935, he legally changed his name to Gerald R. Ford Jr. to honor the man he said he truly “loved and learned from and respected.”