This morning CBS’s Sunday Morning aired a funny segment about Millard Fillmore. Mo Rocca does a great job of making a fairly dry story entertaining and his conversation with Paul Finkelman is hilarious. Enjoy.
Millard Fillmore Did Lower the Price of the Postage Stamp
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I certainly appreciate Fillmore’s name like many in the video… My favorite celebrity name, however, is Benedict Cumberbatch. Even though he’s from across the pond. Funny video. Thanks for sharing!
Abigail Powers Fillmore is proudly embraced in her birthplace, Stillwater, NY, in Saratoga County. I discovered this when I was researching Kate Hewitt, who is also from Stillwater and it’s just down the road from the home of Elmer Ellsworth, her cousin. As I recall, however, the future Mrs. Fillmore only spent a very short period of her life there, but whatever floats their boat… Grant’s Cottage is up at the north end of the county on the grounds of a prison, which I believe, may have closed up within the past few years. (the prison, not the cottage)
I love my native hometown, but Buffalo’s presidential connections are less than stellar. In addition to Fillmore there is Grover Cleveland, of whom it’s been written, “According to the judgment of history it would seem that Grover Cleveland was the most distinguished of the least distinguished American presidents.” And William McKinley did not have a good visit to Buffalo during the 1901 Pan American Exposition.
Of course TR owes his fame to a little problem in Buffalo. His inaugural site in the city is still a minor tourist destination.
The Know Nothings, newly named the “American Party,” nominated former-President Millard Fillmore for the presidency. It didn’t help the xenophobes that at the time of his nomination Fillmore was on a months-long vacation in Europe, nor that he had sought an audience with the Pope while in Italy.
Fillmore did found my alma mater, the University of Buffalo.