President Harding Had Affair with Former Evanston Resident: DNA Test

A woman who had lived near Lake Michigan in Evanston for many years claiming to have had a long-running affair with President Warren G. Harding resulting in a daughter had that confirmed last week, more than 20 years after her death.

Nan Britton had “scandalized the nation” with her 1927 book making the claim Harding was the father of her daughter, who was born in 1919. Just recently, the testing service AncestryDNA confirmed a relation between two of Harding’s known relatives and Britton’s grandson, according to Evanston Now and other reports such as the New York Times and Cleveland.com.

Britton, who died in Oregon in 1991, had difficulty proving her relationship with Harding because she had destroyed her love letters and Harding’s family maintained the 29th president was sterile. Britton’s grandson, Jim Blaesing, was not surprised at the new DNA results.

“For me, it means everything,” he told OregonLive.com. “I want everyone to know. I get angry sometimes when I think about what they did to my grandmother.”