U.S. president John Tyler owned as many as 50 slaves during his lifetime. According to a news item from 1943 on slave-owning presidents, "It is said that John Tyler sold one of his slaves to defray his expenses when he went to Washington to assume his duties as vice-president of the United States." The names of three people enslaved by Tyler are currently known to researchers through the historical record: Armistead, a young valet who was killed in the explosion of the James Hambleton Christian, a half-brother of Tyler's first wife Letitia Christian Aunt Fanny
In the 1840s, abolitionist publisher Joshua Leavitt alleged that Tyler fathered multiple enslaved children.
Tyler is also alleged by descendants to have been the father of John Dunjee (born 1833), though this remains unproven.