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"U.S. Constitution, Article II, §1: No Person except a natural born Citizen, OR a Citizen of the United States, [BUT, NOT A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN] at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; "Methinks that a fruitful line of research might be the birth/parental status of those signers/authors of the Constitution who knowing themselves NOT to be natural born citizens, specifically exempted themselves from the "natural born" requirement.
IOW, if one of our early Presidents (exempted under Article II, §1) was born here, but not of two Citizen parents, We have a clear example of what a natural born citizen is NOT.
Fascinating insight, dear TXnMA!
Off the top of my head, I suppose many of the Framers were British-, Irish-, or Scots-born, or children thereof. But they had invested their own blood, treasure, and sacred honor in their new nation; so earned their "natural-born status" thataway.
They did not expect that their decendents would have to earn it thataway, but simply by virtue of being the offspring of American citizens.... Their generation had already paid the blood-price, as it were.
There is a more direct precedent for the current scenario: the presidency of Chester A. Arthur [1881–1885].
A legend had circulated in the public mind that Arthur was not a natural-born citizen of the United States because of his (alleged) Canadian birth. Like the Birthers today, a great many people back then thought the citizenship test rested on the jus solis doctrine. That is, the place of one's nativity is what gives you your citizenship, irrespective of parentage.
Of course that was all bunk, back then as well as today. The facts show that Chester A. Arthur was born to a "natural-" AND "native-"born American citizen — his mother — and an Irishman who was not a naturalized American citizen, and therefore under the British nationalities act of the time, was a British citizen.
It turned out that Arthur was born in the State of Vermont. But the geography is irrelevant to the question of "natural-born."
Anyhoot, on the historical record it appears that Chester A. Arthur was NOT a natural-born citizen of the United States. He served out his term. His bid to re-up was not successful.
Thankfully, he left little if any long-term public destruction in his wake.
Don't we live in interesting times, dear brother in Christ?
All but one were born "here" but not of two citizen parents. Except for that one, Martin Van Buren, their parents were not citizens of the US when they were born, nor were they, because there was no US to be citizens of, they were British Subjects Van Buren was born in 1782, before the ratification of the Constitution but after the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the passage of the Articles of Confederation(1781), and thus was the child of citizens, and natural born, but also was a citizen of the US before ratification of the Constitution. He was doublely eligible, unlike Zero who is Zeroly eligible.
Several Presidents have had foreign born mothers, but in those days a woman automatically became a citizen upon marrying a citizen, although the same did not apply to men who married US citizen women.