Birthers have had trouble finding evidence this was a widespread belief at any time in our history. It certainly wasn't widely known in 1856 when the Republican party's candidate, John C. Fremont, ran for President with no objections, despite having a French father.
Or in 1854, when then Secretary of State W.L. Marcy responded to someone concerned about the citizenship of aliens by telling him, "...every person born in the United States must be considered a citizen, notwithstanding one or both of his parents may have been alien at the time of his birth. This is in conformity with the English Common Law, which law is generally acknowledged in this country, and a person born of alien parents would, it is presumed, be considered such natural-born citizen, in the language of the Constitution, as to make him eligible for the Presidency."
Want to spread rumors, better be able to back them up with facts, not crap aka misinformation cut & pasted from drconspiracy or politjab.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2700_132/ai_108791284/
Fremont was born in Savannah, Ga., in 1813, the illegitimate son of Anne Beverley Whiting. She ran away flora a pressured marriage of convenience to elderly Major John Pryor and fell in love with a Frenchman named Jean Charles Fremon, who contemporary research suggests was a small-time politician from Quebec, Canada. Fremon possessed a number of skills, and he taught French at the esteemed William and Mary College and later at an exclusive school in Richmond, Va. He engaged in a series of secret trysts with Whiting and, when rumors of her infidelity turned into public facts, Fremon was forced to resign. Following an own confrontation with Pryor, the couple ran away together, eventually winding up in Savannah, where Charles was born. Although Anne's family credentials went back to the American Revolution, she was virtually ostracized by the class-conscious southern society. She didn't marry Fremon until Pryor died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Frémont
Frémont's mother, Anne Beverley Whiting, was the youngest daughter of socially prominent Virginia planter Col. Thomas Whiting. The colonel died when Anne was less than a year old. Her mother married Samuel Cary, who soon exhausted most of the Whiting estate. At age 17 Anne married Major John Pryor, a wealthy Richmond resident in his early 60s. In 1810 Pryor hired Charles Fremon, a French immigrant who had fought with the Royalists during the French Revolution, to tutor his wife. In July 1811 Pryor learned that Whiting and Fremon were having an affair. Confronted by Pryor, the couple left Richmond together on July 10, 1811, creating a scandal that shook city society.[6] Pryor published a divorce petition in the Virginia Patriot, in which he charged that his wife had "for some time past indulged in criminal intercourse". Whiting and Fremon moved first to Norfolk and later settled in Savannah, Georgia. Having recently inherited slaves valued at $1,900, Whiting financed the trip and purchase of a house in Savannah by their sale. When the Virginia House of Delegates refused Pryor’s divorce petition, it was impossible for the couple to marry. In Savannah Whiting took in boarders while Fremon taught French and dancing. On January 21, 1813, their first child, John Charles Fremont, was born.[7] Their son was illegitimate, a social handicap which he overcame later with his marriage to the daughter of a powerful U.S. senator.