Warren G. Harding and Nan Britton: A Century-Old Secret Solved by DNA
The story of Warren G. Harding reveals how long an executive administration can suppress a domestic truth. It represents one of the most sensational presidential scandals of the early twentieth century.
In 1917, while serving as a United States Senator from Ohio, Harding initiated an intimate relationship with Nan Britton, an Ohio woman thirty years his junior. Their secret liaison persisted throughout Harding’s tenure in the Senate and followed him directly into the presidency.
On October 22, 1919, Britton gave birth to a daughter named Elizabeth Ann Blaesing. Harding supported the child financially by sending regular cash payments, though he avoided public contact with Britton to preserve his political career.
Britton later claimed that the lovers met covertly inside the executive mansion, including romantic encounters inside a small coat closet adjoining the Oval Office. Harding never acknowledged Elizabeth Ann in legal documents.
When Harding died suddenly in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, he left no will providing for the young child. Harding’s widow, Florence Kling Harding, immediately cut off all financial communication with Britton.
Facing mounting financial ruin, Britton published a tell-all memoir in 1927 titled The President’s Daughter. The bestselling book marked the first time an American woman publicly claimed to have mothered an illegitimate child with a sitting president.
The Harding family and Republican loyalists launched a vicious counter-campaign against Britton. Critics labeled her a blackmailer and a fraud, while loyal biographers dismissed her detailed accounts as cheap fiction for nearly nine decades.
In August 2015, scientific analysis finally settled the controversy. AncestryDNA performed comprehensive autosomal DNA testing on living descendants from both families.
The testing compared genetic samples from Britton’s grandson, James Blaesing, against samples provided by Harding’s grandnephew, Dr. Peter Harding, and grandniece, Abigail Harding. The scientific results revealed a clear second-cousin genetic relationship, proving definitively that Warren G. Harding was Elizabeth Ann Blaesing’s father.
The genetic validation resolved decades of familial pain and historical skepticism. However, legal disputes over the discovery continued in court.
In 2020, an Ohio court denied James Blaesing’s legal petition to exhume President Harding’s remains from his memorial tomb. The presiding judge ruled that existing genetic matches from living Harding relatives were already conclusive, making physical exhumation entirely unnecessary.
