She was denounced as a “degenerate” and a “pervert,” accused of lying for money and shamed for waging a “diabolical” campaign of falsehoods against the president’s family that tore away at his legacy.
Long before Lucy Mercer, Kay Summersby or Monica Lewinsky, there was Nan Britton, who scandalized a nation with stories of carnal adventures in a White House coat closet and endured a ferocious backlash for publicly claiming that she bore the love child of President Warren G. Harding.
Now nearly a century later, according to genealogists, new genetic tests confirm for the first time that Ms. Britton’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was indeed Harding’s biological child. The tests have solved one of the enduring mysteries of presidential history and offer new insights into the secret life of America’s 29th president. At the least, they demonstrate how the march of technology is increasingly rewriting the nation’s history books. The Nan Britton affair was the sensation of its age, a product of the jazz-playing, gin-soaked Roaring Twenties and a pivotal moment in the evolution of the modern White House. It was not the first time a president was accused of an extracurricular love life, but never before had a self-proclaimed presidential mistress gone public with a popular tell-all book. The ensuing furor played out in newspapers, courtrooms and living rooms across the country.
While some historians dismissed Ms. Britton’s account, it remained part of popular lore. Pundits raised it as an analog after revelations of President Bill Clinton’s affair with Ms. Lewinsky. HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” made it a subplot a few years ago. The Library of Congress effectively recalled it last year when it released Harding’s love letters with another mistress, Carrie Phillips. Ms. Britton, who was 31 years younger than Harding, had a harder time proving her relationship when she revealed it after his death because she had destroyed her own letters with him at his request and because his family insisted he was sterile...
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Many will recall that it was during the Harding administration that New Mexico's Albert Bacon Fall, while serving as Harding's Secretary of Interior, became involved in the Teapot Dome Affair. That was the strange case where Fall was found guilty of accepting a bribe from Edward Doheny, and in a separate trial Doheny was found not guilty of offering the bribe. Fall allegedly used the bribe money at his Three Rivers Ranch in the Tularosa Basin and other businesses. I remember as a kid the big event of the summer was the Billy The Kid Rodeo at the Three Rivers Ranch, and while a youngster winning the best dressed cowboy award. I still remember that whole carton of Doublemint chewing gum that was the prize. I also recall a few years later smoking my first cigarette in a draw that ran by the rodeo arena. In both cases I was totally unaware of the historical significance of the ground where I stood.
Prior to being elected a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Fall, an attorney, had been involved in some significant trials. He successfully defended Oliver Lee, Billy McNew & James Gilliland who were put on trial for the murder of Col. Albert Jennings Fountain, and he also successfully defended Wayne Brazel who was tried for the first degree murder of Pat Garrett. The trials were held in Hillsboro, NM and Las Cruces, NM, respectively.
All of this reeks of the history of southern NM. For instance, the Three Rivers Ranch was once owned and developed by Susan McSween, the widow of Alexander McSween of Lincoln County War fame, where she ran over 5,000 head of cattle and was dubbed "The Cattle Queen of The West." The counties of Otero and Catron exist solely as a result of the Oliver Lee Trial. It was even on a ranch owned by a nephew of Wayne Brazel, William "Mac" Brazel, where strange debris was found that led to the Roswell UFO incident.
And there is much more fascinating history surrounding these folks, and its certainly more interesting and relevant than what President Harding did in a closet in the White House.
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