Presidents used to do cool stuff, President Roosevelt sent a letter to Mr. Parker congratulating him on being the oldest man in the US to own and operate a gas station at that time. Jesse Parker of Nacogdoches

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5620771681267263&set=gm.776586610185844

I am working through notes on my family tree, and one of my maternal great grandmothers father's fathers' mother in law, Sarah Langridge 1826-1930, received a letter signed by Presidents Hoover AND President Coolidge! 

She had the distinction of having received congratulatory telegrams from two presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover and from Governor Green, who held office after she had reached the age of 100.

Born in Sussex, England, she came to America when she was three years old with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Langridge, who settled in Monroe county, New York. She was married when she was 23 years old, to John Williams, and she and her husband immediately set out for Wisconsin, making the trip from Buffalo to Detroit on a sailing vessel, and thence by ox-team across Michigan through Marshall to Chicago, which was then merely a village of log houses. She had 14 children.

Mr. Williams passed away 48 years before she did. 

Born when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were still alive, Mrs. Williams almost up to the day of her death, could recount many interesting events of the pioneer days of New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/93416495/sarah-a.-williams

I really enjoyed the hell out of doing my family tree, extensively, back to about 1550,  in order to track all ancestors back to which country they came from, because (if you're American you'll understand, if you're a citizen of other countries, I don't know how you feel about ancestors and immigration) us Americans are proud that our ancestors are from other countries, made the effort to suffer through adventures and travel, under primitive sailing ships across the Atlantic, to be pioneers in a mostly empty continent, farming, hunting, trapping, and building a new country. 

New countries are exceedingly rare, as are nearly uninhabited continents. Yes, I know, there were people here, but 500,000 indigenous on the continent of North America, is one empty continent. Ditto Australia before the Brits sent the prisoners there. I can look at suburbs of San Diego and Los Angeles with 500k people. I've been to conventions with 1/2 that many people. 500k is not many, when they are all over a continent.