On this day (Aug. 20) in 1833, the 23rd U.S. president, Benjamin Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, into one of America’s premier political families. Along with the Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Bush families, the Harrison clan has given America generations of prominent political leaders.

For example, Benjamin’s great-grandfather Benjamin was governor of Virginia and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his grandfather William Henry was the ninth president of the United States. Thus, it was almost inevitable that the young, ambitious and studious Benjamin would gravitate first into the study of the law and then into politics after his graduation, first in his class, from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, in 1852.

In 1854, after only a year of formal legal training, he passed the bar and established a legal practice in Indianapolis. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Benjamin was commissioned in July 1862 a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and served honorably but without notable distinction until June 1865, when he was mustered out as a colonel (brevet Brigadier General).