DNA proves Warren Harding had a love child with Nan Britton

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.

Nearly 100 years ago, Nan Britton scandalised Washington with her claims that she was the mother of President Warren G Harding “illegitimate child” and tales of romps in a White House closet.

APAn October 28, 1931, photo of Nan Britton and her daughter, Elizabeth Ann Britton, 12.

“It’s truly fantastic to imagine the power DNA can have in tracing one’s family story and in this case rewriting history”.

“He’s seen as scandal-ridden and someone without any substance”, he added, “and this story will hopefully “put to bed” all this stuff and the focus on who he was a president”.

That inadvertently spurred the DNA tests, as Harding’s grandnephew and grandniece, Peter and Abigail Harding, found similarities between those letters and Britton’s descriptions of Harding in her book.

“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”, the Times writes in an extensive report. Her book marked the first time a self-proclaimed presidential mistress had ever gone public with the information.

“The ensuing furore played out in newspapers, courtrooms and living rooms across the country”.

While some historians dismissed Britton’s account, it remained part of popular lore. It came up when President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed and was even a Boardwalk Empire subplot.

Though Britton reportedly destroyed the letters she and Harding sent each other, the letters Harding sent to another mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, have been published online by the Library of Congress.

The 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, and his wife, first lady Florence Kling Harding on July 4, 1923.

Some Harding family members seem willing to accept the DNA evidence of the late president’s love child, but others still aren’t so sure.

Britton was “vilified by everybody”, for claiming President Harding’s paternity, including by members of Mr Harding’s family, he said, and he is “glad to reverse all that”.