August 21, 2008
What’s in a name? UW doc’s is Hayes, Rutherford P. (not B.) Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes was America’s 19th president. But his great-great grandson, a UW physician, is named Rutherford P. Hayes — and therein lies a story.
Rutherford Birchard Hayes of Ohio, a Republican, lived from 1822 to 1893 and served in the White House from 1877 to 1881, having beaten Democrat Samuel Tilden in the closest election in the young nation’s history. It was so close, in fact, a special election commission was set up to determine the winner.
Years before, Hayes had been proud to command the Union’s 23rd Regiment out of Ohio in the Civil War and served with distinction. He was wounded in battle seven times and had four horses shot out from under him.
His was not one of America’s standout presidencies, according to historians, but it was an improvement over the scandal-ridden previous administration of Ulysses Grant. On orders from Hayes, his wife Lucy banned wine and liquor at White House functions, earning her the nickname “Lemonade Lucy.” She was also the first presidential wife to be called the first lady. A lasting bit of trivia about Hayes is that he’s said to have had the longest beard of any president.
Rutherford P. Hayes, on the other hand, has been a doctor of internal medicine with the UW since graduating from medical school here in 1989. He works at the UW Physicians clinic in Belltown.
Bespectacled, friendly, clean-shaven and crisply energetic at 53, Dr. Hayes — whose father was also named Rutherford Hayes but whose two sons are not — allows that yes, he sometimes gets asked about his name, if a clerk sees it on a credit card or when he starts a new job or class. Some aren’t sure of the name and might ask, was he a ball player?
Hayes usually confirms that his ancestor was a president and leaves it at that. But a more tongue-in-cheek reply he said he’s tempted to offer is, “No, my folks were just real presidential aficionados — and my brother is named Millard Fillmore!”
He said as a boy he wasn’t too interested in his famous relation, but he remembers family trips from Troy, Mich., where he was raised, to the Hayes Museum in Fremont, Ohio, where President Hayes grew up.
Not many presidential possessions have survived over the years. Hayes has a shelf of books — some he inherited and others he purchased — about President Hayes, copies of some of his diaries and a child’s cradle bearing the presidential seal, “which is sort of unique and that’s eventually probably going to a museum.”
Hayes said his interest in this historical connection has grown over the years, and he has read various books and articles about those times, especially about the 1876 campaign and election. Hayes didn’t win the Republican nomination until the convention’s seventh ballot, the great-great grandson said, and prevailed largely because he was a likable compromise — “he really wasn’t obnoxious to anyone.”
The fall election was a squeaker. “You know, he lost the popular vote by over a quarter of a million votes — he went to bed thinking he had lost the election,” Hayes said.
Some believed Hayes didn’t win fair and square, which led to such public nicknames as “His fraudulency” or even “Rutherfraud B. Hayes.” William H. Rehnquist, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote a book about it all titled Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876.
The Hayes family is unconcerned by this antique controversy. “The Republicans controlled the electoral boards and the Democrats controlled the other issues,” Hayes said, “so there were shenanigans — or maneuvering, let’s put it that way — on both sides.”
The oddity of the 1876 election caused Dr. Hayes to get a call from an enterprising local television reporter back in 2000 when that election was being disputed and “hanging chads” scrutinized and recounted, but he didn’t get the message until later, and the moment had passed.
Hayes hasn’t been noticed much for his name, but like he said, it happens occasionally — and sometimes for other reasons. As a child, when starting a new school, he said, teachers might see his last name and only part of his lengthy first name on the class list, prompting them to ask, “Is Ruth here?”
But outside of that, life for this presidential descendent is largely untouched by fame. “I mean, has it had any influence in my life? Maybe if I fill out an application — a college application — it may have had some pull there. But outside of that, no.”
His great-great grandfather, he said, was just “a good mediocre president.”
And why is Dr. Hayes named Rutherford Platt Hayes instead of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, like the president? For that Dr. Hayes has an answer that comes from family lore.
“After the president there were four kids (in the family) within a decade or so who were named Rutherford Birchard Hayes, and they all died before two months of age. So they changed the middle initial to ‘P.'”
And are there other presidential relatives and descendants working at the UW? Maybe so. The campus directory lists, for instance, 140 people with the last name of Johnson, and 68 Wilsons and 62 Adamses — plus 27 Kennedys, and 20 Carters, 13 Clintons, 13 Washingtons, nine McKinleys, seven Bushes, and six Nixons.
