Ohio, birthplace of Thomas Edison, NBA star LeBron James, seven U.S. presidents, and me.

Hi, I'm Shannon Rice, the podcast producer here at C-SPAN. And this week, lectures in history travels to Akron, Ohio.

Ohio has been called by historians the, quote,

mother of presidents. And University of Akron professor Kevin Kern discusses those seven Ohioans,

who have served as president between the years of 1868 and 1920. Those presidents are Ulysses

Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding.

More on the birthplace of many of our nation's presidents after this.

It's good to see you here today. Today we've been talking, we're going to be talking about the Ohio dynasty of U.S. presidents.

And as we've already discussed, Ohio had

been moving from the periphery to the center of U.S. politics before the Civil War and then, of course,

played a central leadership role in that war itself. And this trend is going to continue after the

war in one of the most remarkable political dynasties in U.S. history, one that's often

been compared to the Virginia dynasty of the early republic. Both Virginia and Ohio have laid

claim to the mother of president's title, even to the point of fighting over poor old William

Henry Harrison and all of his 30 days in office. But even taking old typic canoe out

of the equation, I'm not really sure it's a fair fight. I mean, for example, the Virginia dynasty

has some of the most famous and influential presidents in U.S. history, including the likes of

Washington and Jefferson and Madison. Ohio, on the other hand,

has a bunch of beardy guys that no one seems to remember or know much about.

Seriously, anyone here want to try picking these guys out of a lineup?

Danny.

So yeah, you've got, I think we got McKinley.

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