Like his future running mate, William Henry Harrison, Tyler hailed from Charles City County, Virginia, and was descended from the First Families of Virginia.[2][3] The Tyler family traced its lineage to English settlers and 17th century colonial Williamsburg. His father, John Tyler Sr., commonly known as Judge Tyler, was a friend and college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and served in the Virginia House of Delegates alongside Benjamin Harrison V, William's father. The elder Tyler served four years as Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates before becoming a state court judge and later governor of Virginia and a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at Richmond. His wife, Mary Marot (Armistead), was the daughter of prominent New Kent County plantation owner and one-term delegate, Robert Booth Armistead. She died of a stroke in 1797 when her son John was seven years old.[4]
With two brothers and five sisters, Tyler was reared on Greenway Plantation, a 1,200-acre (5 km2) estate with a six-room manor house his father had built.[b] Enslaved labor tended various crops, including wheat, corn and tobacco.[5] Judge Tyler paid high wages for tutors who challenged his children academically.