Occupation Businessman Role Businessman | Name Francis Nixon | |
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Full Name Francis Anthony Nixon Religion Quaker (originally Methodist) Relatives Julie Nixon Eisenhower (granddaughter)Tricia Nixon Cox (granddaughter)Christopher Nixon Cox (great-grandson)Jennie Eisenhower (great-granddaughter)Pat Nixon (daughter-in-law)Edward F. Cox (grandson-in-law)David Eisenhower (grandson-in-law)Christopher Nixon Cox (great-grandson)Andrea Catsimatidis (great-granddaughter-in-law)Alexander Richard Eisenhower (great-grandson)Melanie Catherine Eisenhower (great-granddaughter) Children Richard Nixon, Donald Nixon, Edward Nixon, Harold Nixon, Arthur Nixon Parents Sarah Ann Nixon, Samuel Brady Nixon Grandchildren Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Tricia Nixon Cox, Donald A. Nixon, Richard C. Nixon, Lawrene Mae Nixon Anfinson Similar People | ||
Francis Anthony Nixon (December 3, 1878 – September 4, 1956) was an American businessman and the father of U.S. President Richard Nixon.
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Early life
Nixon was born in Elk Township, Vinton County, Ohio, the son of Sarah Ann (nee Wadsworth), a native of Hocking Township, Fairfield County, Ohio, and Samuel Brady Nixon, who was from Smith Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania. Nixon moved to California at the turn of the century after having been frostbitten working as a motorman in an open streetcar in Columbus, Ohio. After working as a farmhand and oil roustabout, he attempted to cultivate lemons outside Los Angeles. Nixon's family ancestry included colonial Pennsylvania Quakers. He was raised Methodist, however, but converted to Quakerism when he married Hannah Milhous on June 25, 1908.
Family
He married Hannah Milhous on June 25, 1908.
They had five sons:
Jobs
After Richard was born, Nixon abandoned the lemon grove, and the family moved to the Quaker community of Whittier, California. Nixon focused on the family business, a store that sold groceries and Atlantic Richfield gasoline, but the family remained impoverished. Nixon's life was marked by the deaths of his two sons, Arthur and Harold, from tuberculosis. He has been described as a "restless, frustrated, and angry man, a mean-spirited person who psychologically abused his five sons and sometimes beat them." However, Richard always spoke highly of his parents. He often spoke lovingly of his mother as a "Quaker saint," and began his memoirs with the words "I was born in a house my father built." Writer Jessamyn West, a cousin of the Nixons, was in Frank's Sunday school class for some time. She later described him as "a fiery persuasive teacher," and wrote that Frank Nixon's version of the social gospel inclined her politically toward socialism.
In popular culture
He was played by Tom Bower in Oliver Stone's Nixon.