William Henry Harrison, nicknamed "Old Tippecanoe", was the ninth president of the United States and was born on February 9, 1773 in Charles City County, Virginia. He attended Hampden Sydney College in 1787 where he studied history, then joined his brother in learning medicine in Richmond, Virginia in 1790. That same year he changed his interest and joined the Army's First Infantry regular in 1791. He later headed to the northwest where he spent much of his life. William Henry Harrison was born on the Berkeley plantation where he grew up and worked as a planter. Of four girls and three boys, including himself, he was the youngest son of Benjamin Harrison V, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and Elizabeth Bassett Harrison. His family had a political history spanning five generations who held the position. William was sent to a high school by Berkley as a child. As he grew up, William decided to become a doctor and attended an academy in Southampton County. He later dropped out of Hampden Sydney College because he could not afford it. In 1790, he joined his brother in Richmond where he studied medicine. He later headed to Philadelphia where he studied medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, considered the father of American psychiatry. When his father, Benjamin, died on April 24, 1791, William left Philadelphia and joined the First American Infantry of the Regular Army (Garraty). William served in the Northwest Territory under General Anthony Wayne who was fighting the Indians of the Northwest. Confederacy on the encroachment of white settlers. He appreciated the reputation white settlers had for him as an Indian fighter. On August 20, 1794, the camp......in the middle of the newspaper......tagged the expansion of executive power, the independent treasury, the spoils system, and abolitionism in his inaugural address. On April 4, after only one month in office, President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-eight. John Tyler, Vice President of Virginia, became the tenth President of the United States to be sworn in on April 6 (Linton). Works Cited Cleaves, Freeman. William Henry Harrison and his times. Newtown, CT: American Political Biography Press, 1990. Garraty, John A. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Howes, Kelly King. War of 1812. Detroit: UXL, 2002. Linton, Calvin D. The Bicentennial Almanac: 200 Years of America. Nashville and New York: Thomas Nelson Inc., 1975. Peterson, Norma Lois. The presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989.