William Henry Harrison was the first president to die in office, serving only thirty-two days, and the nation had never before mourned a sitting president. His body was placed in a glass-covered coffin in the East Room of the White House, streets in Washington were covered in black crepe, and at the funeral fourteen military companies marched down Pennsylvania Avenue while Harrison's saddled horse followed the procession riderless. Harrison had first traveled to the Ohio River in 1791, and that river led the young Virginian to the Northwest Territory and to North Bend. In July 1841, fifty years after arriving in Ohio, and after a career as an officer, a governor, and a president, he traveled down that familiar river one last time and was laid to rest in his adopted home.
