13. Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore’s parents were homesteaders who moved from Bennington, Vermont, to the Finger Lakes Region of New York in 1799. Fillmore’s father and uncle built a small cabin for their families in Locke Township (now Summerhill), and the thirteenth president was born here on January 7, 1800. The Fillmores lost the land in a title dispute, and Millard’s father moved with his growing family to Sempronius, New York (now Niles). Fillmore’s birthplace was torn down in 1852, but the Millard Fillmore Memorial Association built a replica cabin that sits about five miles from the original site in Fillmore Glen State Park. Fillmore was raised to farm labor and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a clothmaker. He doggedly pursued an education, however, and eventually entered the legal profession.
Down small windy roads in the beautiful finger lakes region of New York, the Fillmore site is the most serene and quiet of the presidential birthplaces I have visited. The site is an open field with a flagpole and a lone weathered picnic table. I had the site to myself and enjoyed the quiet while thinking about the Fillmore family homesteading this site which probably looks today much as it did at the opening of the 1800s. After a refreshing shoot, I drive down the road to the replica cabin which would have been much better situated in the open fields of the birth site.