Nan Britton and President Harding’s daughter

With so many scandals and potential scandals swirling around the current administration and the hopeful occupant of a future one, I was not prepared for the final word on a long simmering one from Warren G. Harding. Yet there it is: finally, after being rumored and argued about for nearly 90 years, the truth about Warren G. Harding’s alleged love child is out. The New York Times reports that DNA tests confirmed, for the first time, that Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, the daughter of Nan Britton, Harding’s secretary and secret lover while he was a U.S. Senator from Ohio and during the three years (1921-23) he was in the White House,  was indeed fathered by the 29th President.

Britton had written a much-maligned tell-all book in 1928, detailing her adulterous relationship with Harding that continued right up to his election as President in 1920. Harding, who had died in office in 1923, was not well regarded by posterity and historians at the time (or now), but his honor was still defended furiously in court and out of it: Elizabeth, born in 1919, died in 2005 with her paternity still unsettled and furiously denied by Harding’s family. Britton would not have had to write the book that caused her to be maligned like some are attacking Bill Cosby’s accusers today if Harding hadn’t betrayed her and their daughter, for though she said that he had promised to provide for them, there was no mention of Nan and Elizabeth in Harding’s will. Of course, he hadn’t expected to drop dead at 59, but then, who does? He had an obligation to make sure his daughter was well-provided for, and botched it. Continue reading →