Martin Van Buren earned two nicknames during his lifetime: “the Little Magician”—he was a smooth politician—and “Old Kinderhook” from the town where he was born. “Old Kinderhook,” abbreviated to O.K., was his campaign slogan and was one way the expression became part of the English language.

Van Buren was the first president born an American citizen. He was also the only president for whom English was a second language; his first language was Dutch. Van Buren entered political life in 1812 after winning a seat in the state legislature. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821, he ran for governor of New York in 1828 and won, resigning to serve as secretary of state in Andrew Jackson’s Cabinet. In 1832, he joined Jackson on the ticket as the vice presidential nominee. In 1836, with Jackson’s support, he won the presidency.

In March 1837, President Van Buren, whose wife had died 18 years earlier, moved to the White House with his four bachelor sons. There was no first lady until Van Buren’s son Abraham married Angelica Singleton, a niece of Dolley Madison. Mrs. Madison made the match.

Two months into Van Buren’s presidency, some of Jackson’s policies sent the country into an economic depression, the Panic of 1837. The bad economy cost Van Buren a second-term nomination and he returned to Kinderhook. In 1848, he ran for president again on the anti-slavery Free Soil ticket but didn’t receive a single electoral vote. He died on July 24, 1862, at age 79 of heart failure.