Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History class, a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.

Hello and welcome to the podcast, I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry.

Last time, in our episode about Julia Sands' letters to Chester A. Arthur, we mentioned

that when Arthur was selected as the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 1880,

some questions came up about whether or not he had been born in the United States and consequently

whether he was eligible to be the vice president at all.

And some of the details of this are a little convoluted, and it's not necessarily everyday

knowledge today.

I think the random people in my life that I asked if they had ever heard about this had

not, but at the same time it has had a surprising amount of staying power.

And after doing a little bit of research into this while doing that Julia Sands episode,

I couldn't decide what to make of the whole thing.

So I texted my friend Amy, who's a history teacher, and I asked her, do you have an opinion

on whether Chester A. Arthur was born in the United States?

She did not have an opinion, and then we talked about it for the next two hours.

And over the course of that conversation, we were both like, this needs to be a whole

episode and not just a two sentence side reference in the Julia Sands thing.

So here it is.

The questions about Chester A. Arthur's birth really traced back to his dad.

Arthur's father William Arthur was born December 5, 1796 in County, Antrim, Ireland.

His family had enough money for him to get an education, including pursuing a degree

at Belfast College.

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