Articles about First Ladies

Below please take the time to read responses and subsequent articles that Carl Sferrazza Anthony, the consulting historian for the National First Ladies' Library, has written in response to various questions received from you!

The Role of First Lady and Origin of the Title "First Lady"

Starting with our first President, George Washington to our most recent, every chief executive has had a "First Lady." But what does this term mean?

Generally, the term First Lady applies to the wife of the president. However, there have been many additions and exceptions and the term is now considered more inclusive than just being a spouse of a chief executive.

There were four Presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren and Arthur - whose wives had died before they became President (Martha Jefferson, Rachel Jackson, Hanna Van Buren and Ellen Arthur).

In those corresponding cases a daughter (Martha Jefferson Randolph), a niece and daughter-in-law (Emily Donelson and Sarah Jackson), another daughter-in-law (Angelica Van Buren) and a sister (Mary Arthur McElroy) served as hostess at White House social events and were First Ladies.

Many people also include those four wives who died before to be categorized as First Ladies - and also, the first wife of Teddy Roosevelt - Alice Lee Roosevelt - even though he was remarried to his second wife Edith by the time he became President.

Also included are the two women who married presidents after their terms in office were over and their first wives had died (Fillmore's wife Caroline and Benjamin Harrison's wife Mary).

Two Presidents came to the White House as bachelors and so in one case a niece (Buchanan's niece Harriet Lane) served as hostess and in another, a sister served (Cleveland's sister Rose Elizabeth Cleveland) - both are considered First Ladies.

Three First Ladies died in the White House - Letitia Tyler, Caroline Harrison and Ellen Wilson - and even though two of their husbands did marry their second wives while they were still President, there was a gap of time when other relatives served as hostess: Priscilla Tyler and Letty Tyler Semple (daughter-in-law and daughter of Tyler), Mary Harrison McKee (daughter of Harrison) and Margaret Wilson (daughter of Wilson).

Finally, there were four president's wives who were not always in strong health and had inconsistent records as the public hostess at ceremonies. Two of these First Ladies - Elizabeth Monroe and Abigail Fillmore - were the primary hostesses that the public knew but they relied on the social help and constant presence of their daughters Eliza Monroe Hay and Abbie Fillmore, respectively. It is debatable whether these daughters can really be considered First Ladies. However, in the case of Peggy Taylor and Eliza Johnson - who only rarely appeared in public, their daughters Betty Taylor Bliss and Martha Johnson Patterson - were the primary hostess who accompanied the President at events like state dinners. In these two instances, both the wives and daughters are accurately considered First Ladies.

The term "First Lady" is not an official title. It is not comparable, for example, with any of the royal designations used in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East. Since there was great affection and familiarity with the wife of George Washington, Martha Washington, from her help to colonial soldiers during the American Revolution, she had been unofficially nicknamed "Lady Washington," largely because of the predominant British-American culture of the people of the land that would become the United States. There is also documentation that her two immediate successors Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison were called "Lady Adams" and "Lady Madison," so the tradition stuck. Dolley Madison's husband had been Secretary of State during the eight years of Jefferson's presidency and helped serve as his hostess when his daughter was not in Washington. She then spent the following eight years as her husband's First Lady, so she had a total of 16 years in the role and as she lived into old age as a widow in Washington, the public held her in great affection. At her funeral in 1848, President Zachary Taylor informally eulogized her as the "first lady of our land." Ten years later, Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper used the title in print for the first time. It was in reference to bachelor President Buchanan's niece Harriet. Since she was not his wife, people were not sure how to characterize her and so they used the expression "first lady of the White House." It slowly came into public use, some western newspapers using it to describe Mary Lincoln. The term was used almost always in reference to the first college-educated First Lady Lucy Hayes during her tenure 1877-1881 and it became permanent. Many women have not liked the term. Jackie Kennedy used to joke that it sounded like the name of a prize saddle horse.

Martha Washington did not live in the White House. Not only was the mansion not yet built but the capital cities were first located in New York and Philadelphia. Still, from the beginning of the American Presidency, there were social events that served political purposes and in reflecting society's designation of women as being responsible for all issues related to home life, the presidents' wives were considered in charge of everything to do with the running of the White House - even though the president's office staff worked in rooms located on the private floor where the family lived. Since the new nation was a democracy, yet needed to command respect from nations that were not, First Ladies tried to act as hostess in a way that would balance her public image as both a commoner and a queen. What she wore, how she looked, how much money she spent, what her family life was like, how she entertained, what food she served, how she relaxed - these all became matters of interest to the country, of both men and women, children and adults. Dolley Madison proved to be the most successful at balancing the image of commoner and queen and she was held up as the ideal role model for well over the first century of the presidency. This role of being in charge of the White House as hostess, manager, decorator, caretaker is now considered the "traditional" role and it is still part of what First Ladies do.

Also from the beginning, people looked to the First Lady as the leading or most famous woman in the country. Many organizations sought to have her support their cause or efforts they were making for charity or to establish institutions to help others. Many First Ladies supported certain types of causes. Dolley Madison, for example, helped an orphanage that cared only for young girls and became a frequent visitor to a local private school that only taught young girls. Harriet Lane took an interest in the art and the needs of Native American Indians. Mary Lincoln became an advocate for an organization that provided support for housing, employment and education of freed African-American slaves. Helen "Nellie" Taft inspected the unhealthy workplace conditions of those who worked for the federal government and used her influence to get a health and safety law passed. Florence Harding strongly supported many organizations that practiced and taught humane treatment of animals. Eleanor Roosevelt took on the needs of many different segments of American society: the unemployed, World War I veterans, West Virginia coal miners, women, African-Americans, refugees of World War II. She not only did this through charity efforts as other First Ladies did but expanded it to include many political actions, some involving federal laws or funding. By doing this she helped to enlarge the public role to become more political. First Ladies since Jackie Kennedy have all focused on specific causes - many of them have involved some form of federal government involvement or lobbying for legal change: Jackie Kennedy and historic preservation, Lady Bird Johnson and environmental protection, Pat Nixon and voluntarism, Betty Ford and expanded equal rights for women, Rosalynn Carter and care for the mentally ill, Nancy Reagan and drug prevention among young people, Barbara Bush and the problems of illiteracy, Hillary Clinton and health care and adoption, Laura Bush and education and libraries.

A natural outgrowth of First Ladies being involved in public causes would seem to be an increase of their political activities. However, as early as the second First Lady Abigail Adams, wives of presidents have been known to offer their opinion and advice on politics, policy, crises and personnel. All have exercised some form of influence whether it was personal such as managing the President's appointment schedules so he would not tax himself (as Nancy Reagan did), assuming some of his work (as Edith Wilson did), serving as a liaison to others for the President (as Mamie Eisenhower did), or working with the President, the Cabinet and other officials to push for legislation they wanted to see enacted (as Rosalynn Carter did). In the end, it is the unique balance of power within each unique presidential marriage that determines what remains a largely covert degree of influence and power of First Ladies.

A First Lady gets no salary, but her living space, travel and personal protection is provided by the government. As the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 ruled, a presidential spouse can not accept gifts that are valued over a certain amount; all gifts and their values must be declared and are considered property of the U.S. government. In the case of gifts given by friends or close associates, she is given the opportunity to purchase the items by paying the government the estimated value.

In the annual budget for its operational funding that the executive branch requests Congress to appropriate, there is now a clause that justifies federal funding to salary the staff of a spouse of a president to allow them to "help the president to carry out the duties of the presidency." Edith Roosevelt was the first First Lady to have a federally-salaried social secretary. Lou Hoover paid from her own funds to hire more secretaries. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first to have a personal secretary as well as a social secretary. Jackie Kennedy hired the first press secretary, Pat Nixon the first appointments secretary, Betty Ford the first speechwriter, Rosalynn Carter the first Chief of Staff and Nancy Reagan the first Special Projects Director. The First Lady's staff is located in the East Wing of the White House.

The East Wing was built during World War II to provide necessary office space for the military assigned to function in the mansion and serve the president. Since military personnel also served as social aides at White House social events, it became logical during the Eisenhower years to have all of the social staff as well as the correspondence, scheduling and other personnel working for a First Lady to all be located in one place where military personnel was also located and since then, the East Wing has housed the First Lady's staff. Rosalynn Carter and Laura Bush maintained working offices there with their staffs while Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush all worked from offices in the family quarters. Hillary Clinton was the first and only First Lady to also maintain an office in the West Wing, in light of her substantial involvement in many policy-related issues that the president's staff worked on.

First Ladies with International Interests

Many, many First Ladies took an active interest in matters of foreign affairs and some often weighed in on their husbands decisions or those of the Secretary of State. Frankly, I don't know where to begin because there are several abstraction levels of information to all this. You might be able to pick through the individual biographies that we have posted on the website and search through the sections on their White House years for pull some information out - however, not all of the biographies have been updated from the original ones and thus will be missing information. That said, I know for certain that the following have been posted and will have general summary information you are looking for: Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Elizabeth Monroe, Louisa Adams, Bess Truman, Ida McKinley, Nellie Taft, Edith Wilson, Bess Truman, Jacqueline Kennedy, Pat Nixon, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Laura Bush. You might also look at Lucy Hayes's biography for her views on immigration to the US from foreign countries.

Unfortunately, some of those who also took direct roles in foreign affairs have not yet had their new biographies writtern or posted: Edith Roosevelt who served as a private emissary between the President and British Ambassador, Florence Harding who disagreed with Commerce Department policy on provisions to send supplies to Russia, Lou Hoover, who lived in a variety of foreign nations, including China during the Boxer Rebellion, and Eleanor Roosevelt - who took an especially active interest in European and Asian affairs before the United States became involved in World War II - and of course during the war. The best way to find these ancedotal accounts would be to consult biographies of them. I have written the biography Florence Harding and included her interest in foreign affairs. Sylvia Jukes Morris has written the most extensive biography of Theodore Roosevelt's second wife, Edith Roosevelt, and it includes the role she played as emissary. On Eleanor Roosevelt there are several good sources. I would recommend the basic and detailed Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph Lash for the pre-war and war years and Doris Goodwin's No Ordinary Time for the war years. On Lou Hoover, the most recent and scholarly biography to consult is Lou Hoover, part of the biographical series published by the University of Kansas.

First Ladies and Photography

There's an interesting history of photography and First Ladies - a certain ambivilence that stems back to the very nature of this role of a presidential spouse who has had placed upon her expectations to be a public symbol of the mythical "typical American woman" yet is unelected and vulnerable to attack for presuming to be a leader or spokesperson for the nation's women by virtue of her derivative power. In the earliest days that ambivilence was also part of the elite woman's credo of remaining in the domain where she was granted full power - the private home - and, as the old saying went, "have her name in the paper when she was born, married and died.". That First Ladies' private homes happened to also be the national political arena only deepened the ambivilence since the media and the public felt it had a full right to access of not only personal information but how that woman looked.

In 1844 (almost immediately after photography technology enabled individual images to be taken) an incumbent First Lady sat for her picture. Eloping with the widowed President Tyler, 24 year old deb and heiress Julia Gardiner - nicknamed the Rose of Long Island by the New York press - sat for her picture in New York but it had more to do with her healthy ego and youthful disregard for the modesty the older Washington establishment women. Interestingly, however, she decided to refrain from having copies made and publicly distributed.

Her immediate successor Sarah Polk also posed - at the White House - for three photographs - one alone, one with her husband and one with a group that included a future First Lady (Harriet Lane, niece of bachelor President James Buchanan) and a former one, the elderly Dolley Madison (chronologically speaking, Dolley Madison was the earliest First Lady photographed).

The next First Lady has perhaps the most intriguing story involving photography. Although living in the White House, Peggy Taylor refused to assume the full responsibilities of hostess and house manager, leaving most of it to her daughter Betty - but she did appear at events. She also refused to have her image made for public consumption - no paintings, engravings or photographs. Thus she was able to often attend public events in and out of the White House, with or without the President anonymously, with nobody knowing of her presence. The assumption that she was absent spurred the false stories in Washington that she was considered an embarrassment with crude western manners and smoking a corncob pipe - having spent most of her adulthood in the western frontier. About thirty or forty years after her death, an engraving began circulating that it was an image of her. Some experts doubted this - until the late 1990's when, sure enough the one private photograph that she did in fact pose for in Washington was discovered among a group of other images of Mexican War figures and bought by a private collector at the Georgetown flea market held on Sundays. It matches the engraving. We can send a copy to you as long as it is credited as 'private collection, courtesy of National First Ladies Library" and not distributed via any wire services.

That was the last time a First Lady could chose to be ambivilent about photography - the next First Lady Abigail Fillmore found that the portrait she posed for was quickly copied on small 'carte-de-visite" cards and sold to tourists. Mary Lincoln's photographs were used by newspapers that had begun to carry engravings as illustrations. In the post-Civil War era, there was no more popular First Lady than the 21 year old bride of the President Frances Cleveland. While she assumed a public profile with some caution about having her political opinions drawn out, she posed for dozens of photographs and they only increased the obsession with her - many young women used the pictures to copy her clothing and hair style. Frances Cleveland was, in fact, fascinated by the growing national love affair with the picture. By the time of her tenure, the small "brownie" camera had become available at reasonable prices to the general public and the First Lady bought one and used it in private, often taking pictures of her baby daughters - and along on those afternoons when she was able to slip away and go fishing at Rock Creek Park. She took hundreds of the small brownie shots.

When Edith Roosevelt found that her young children were being stalked by press photographers she declared them to be "fiends" but she permitted formally-posed shots of herself and children to be made and given out freely to the press with the hope it would reduce the spontaneous shots. She was only partially successful - one picture now in the Library of Congress shows Edith undaintily mounting her horse on a Washington sidewalk before her morning ride.

When Florence Harding was surrounded by photographers one day during her husband's campaign she yelled at them to stop "I take an awful picture." She tried to placate them by handing out copies of her on a bike - from thirty years earlier. They didn't buy it - and she endured the posing, but covering her neck wrinkles with a velvet neck band. She did, however, take an avid interest in the "moving picture." In fact, we have a still picture of Florence Harding working a movie camera on the White House lawn. Her fascination with Hollywood (she was the first to enlist famous film and stage actors to campaign for her husband), including her coming to the opening of Universal Studios in 1916 apparently spurred her confidante Evalyn McLean (whose husband once owned and edited the Washington Post) to set up her own mini-studio at her estate Friendship (where McLean Gardens is now located) to make edited high-quality home movies - and got pointers from Florence Harding's political ally D.W. Griffith.

Grace Coolidge, hiking around Washignton in her sportswear, cooperated with anyone who recognized her and wanted a photograph. In assuming more of the ceremonial role from her taciturn husband and greeting dozens of public groups, organizations and clubs that came to visit he White House, Grace Coolidge helped to create the very first "photo ops" of posed tableaux intended to seem natural - one even caught her holding a flower at the amaryllis show - right beneath a sign that states: "Do Not Handle the Flowers." She also owned her own still picture camera and a home movie camera - one of the pictures you included in your initial email to us. Whether or not she was made an honorary member of the White House Press Photographers Association I have been unable to determine. On this question you might contact the Coolidge Memorial Association and Museum Foundation in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Her immediate successor Lou Hoover also owned a camera which she used frequently on weekends at the presidential retreat she established in the Shenendoahs.

Photograph by Cecil Stoughton

Of course no First Lady, let alone few female celebrities could lay claim to the dubious title of "the most woman in the world" - except Jackie Kennedy. Her own history with the camera came one day in Washington, just after she was hired as the Washington Times-Herald "Inquiring Cameragirl" column. Walking up to bother strangers and ask them a question of the day was challenge enough - but then she had to run out and take a basic class on photography since she was also required to snap a picture of those she questioned. No First Lady took to photography as an art - and form of political messaging - better than Jackie Kennedy. She offered suggestions on angles and poses and light and distances to the government photographers assigned to cover presidential events and soon invited them into the family's private quarters to capture moments like birthday parties or to their summer and winter homes for parties, holidays and other intimate family moments. She also carefully controlled what were technically public domain images (the White House photographer is a federally-salaried position and the pictures they create are the property of the US government and by definition owned by the American people), editing out those that showed her smoking or which she felt were unflattering or too revealing - and was able to exercise this control even after she left the White House and the photo archive was sent to Boston for the eventually JFK Library. Yet as First Lady she enjoyed taking personal pictures of her children on the White House lawn and even took some snaps during her heralded trip to India and Pakistan in 1962 - there's a famous one of her surreptiously taking a picture of foreign press with a new compact camera - and one photographer she didn't see, who got the picture of her taking the picture. When she was in Italy the summer of 1962, she was so beset by dozens of agile snapping photographers who surrounded her as she went out to nightclubs and sat in cafes, she unwittingly helped give permanent circulation to the phrase "paparazzi" (Italian for pesky flying bugs). She was also known to edit the photographs of her children that were intended to appear in magazines, consistently refusing to cooperate with the West Wing Press Office pushing requests from photographers. One famous incident had Look photographer Stanely Tretick sending her pictures of her children that he took one day when she was away - it was the President's idea that he do so, feeling that if Jackie saw how great they were, she would relent. She would not. Of course, as a former First Lady she was so unrelentingly stalked by one paparazzi Ron Gallela that she took him to court and won an injunction that demanded he keep a certain distance of yards from her at all times. It had no affect on other photographers of course - one of whom even snapped her sunbathing in the nude on the private Greek island her second husand Ari Onassis. Still, her visual judgment and understanding of the journalistic power and artistic beauty of photography remained a lifelong passion. She was an early and important supporter for the founding and healthy establishment of the International Photography Center in New York. Along with the quality literary books she acquired and shaped as an editor that she considered her proudest works she also included one she had fought to do and for which she wrote the introduction, a book of the turn-of-the-century images of deteriorating Parisian parks by Eugene Atget called Atget's Gardens.

Since Jackie Kennedy every First Lady has come to accept the often unwelcome presence of photographers in every aspect of their life - whether one catches Hillary Clinton dancing in a bathing suit with her husband, or Nancy Reagan stumbling in a bad fall at the 1980 Republican Convention, or Barbara Bush in the morning on the lawn of her family's Kennebunkport home in a nightgown and slippers. With the constant presence of government photographers in their public and private lives, the experiences of their White House years are captured for them. While some (I believe Barbara Bush - but I'm not certain, so you'd have to check that) might take family pictures now, none since Jackie Kennedy has been known to be a regular photographer. One last note: as a young congressional wife, Lady Bird Johnson was so entralled with living in Washington,that she bought a movie camera - along with a still picture camera she had and used often. Among the bits of local life in the 1930's and 1940's that she captured was some color footage - of Eleanor Roosevelt. Only example I know of a First Lady filming a First Lady.

Mary Todd Lincoln and Slavery

Image courtesy Library of Congress
Modifications
© 2004 Jone Lewis

Prior to her relocation to live with her sister Elizabeth Edwards and her husband Ninian Edwards in Springfield, in the "free state" (meaning no slavery permitted) of Illinois - and her subsequent marriage and life there to Abraham Lincoln, the former Mary Todd lived where she had been born, in Lexington, Kentucky.

In the household of her father Robert Todd, a prominent attorney of substantial property, there were African-American slaves working for the family. She did not and never would technically own a slave herself but as a young woman she would have been assisted by slaves in her daily life. What is also known about those early years, however, is that she was able to view the town area where slaves were publicly sold in Lexington from somewhere within the Todd home - many accounts claim it was her childhood bedroom window.

Witnessing the sale of human beings this way affected her permanent view of human bondage and made her a rabid abolitionist, seeing the slavery issue only in human terms and not those of economics or politics. It was an issue of such passion to her that she insisted on later taking her husband to see what she viewed as the evil of slave trade when he joined her in a visit to her family. She was also greatly influenced by her maternal grandmother Elizabeth Humphries who was a white woman known among the secret circle of Lexington abolitionists to be part of the "Underground Railroad." Thus, the home of Mary Todd's beloved grandmother was an apparent "safe house," a known place where slaves who escaped from bondage and fled towards the border to enter the "free state" region knew they could find safe haven in the home of Mrs. Humphries. Since the escaped slaves were legal property and breaking the law by running for their freedom, Mary Todd's grandmother risked legal proscecution for abetting "contraband" to live by her principals.

In many of the later accounts of not only Mary Lincoln's letters but first-hand recollections of conversations with her, she expressed a heated hatred of slavery and considered the emancipation proclamation to be the greatest poltiical act in her lifetime. In the White House, her closest confidante was her seamstress Elizabeth Keckley. Mrs. Keckly was a former slave who had managed to buy her own freedom.

First Ladies and Politics

Below is a brief overview, even though there is a wealth of information available on this topic. Of course, explore the biographies of the individual First Ladies on our website. Within the section for each woman that is marked "White House Years" you will find many examples of the wide variety of ways that each different First Lady has interpreted what was the right role of her to play.

Starting with our first President, George Washington to our most recent, every chief executive has had a "First Lady." But what does this term mean?

There were four Presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren and Arthur - whose wives had died before they became President (Martha Jefferson, Rachel Jackson, Hanna Van Buren and Ellen Arthur).

Also included are the two women who married presidents after their terms in office were over and their first wives had died (Fillmore's wife Caroline and Benjamin Harrison's wife Mary).

The term "First Lady" is not an official title. It is not comparable, for example, with any of the royal designations used in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East. Since there was great affection and familiarity with the wife of George Washington, Martha Washington, from her help to colonial soldiers during the American Revolution, she had been unofficially nicknamed "Lady Washington," largely because of the predominant British-American culture of the people of the land that would become the United States. There is also documentation that her two immediate successors Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison were called "Lady Adams" and "Lady Madison," so the tradition stuck. Dolley Madison's husband had been Secretary of State during the eight years of Jefferson's presidency and helped serve as his hostess when his daughter was not in Washington. She then spent the following eight years as her husband's First Lady, so she had a total of 16 years in the role and as she lived into old age as a widow in Washington, the public held her in great affection. At her funeral in 1848, President Zachary Taylor informally eulogized her as the "first lady of our land." Ten years later, Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper used the title in print for the first time. It was in reference to bachelor President Buchanan's niece Harriet. Since she was not his wife, people were not sure how to characterize her and so they used the expression "first lady of the White House." It slowly came into public use, some western newspapers using it to describe Mary Lincoln. The term was used almost always in reference to the first college-educated First Lady Lucy Hayes during her tenure 1877-1881 and it became permanent. Many women have not liked the term. Jackie Kennedy used to joke that it sounded like the name of a prize saddle horse.

Jacqueline Kennedy and Foreign Policy

At present, much of what we know regarding the rather substantial extent to which Jacqueline Kennedy was not only kept appraised of international issues and crises of her husband's presidency but often weighed in with her own opinions or was participatory in discussions over the matters derives from interviews and oral histories of the principal figures, most of which seem to have been conducted for full-length biographies of her. For example, the recollections of her deliberations on U.S.-Soviet relations stem from David Ormsby-Gore, known as "Lord Harlech," the British Ambassador and close friend to both John and Jacqueline Kennedy. He gave an extensive interview on the matter with biographer David Heymann for his biography of the former First Lady in the late 1980's. While the Heymann book makes what historians tend to consider some dubious claims regarding her personal life, it is also quite likely that the Harlech interview material would have been vigorously denied or eroded over time, especially since Mrs. Onassis was alive at the time it was published. My own oral history biography of her, As We Remember Her, relied heavily in this area on interviews with former Defense Undersecretary Roswell Giltpatrick, whom I interviewed at his law office in 1995, presidential advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorenson, also interviewed in that time period, then-astronaut and future U.S. Senator John Glenn, Senator Edward Kennedy, and John Kenneth Galbraith, economic advisor and U.S. Ambassador to India under JFK.

Along these lines, further material may be found if there are oral history transcripts at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library that have been opened to the public since my own research there in 1995 and 1996. I seem to recall that they have some fairly good finding aids which may now even be online and I was able to locate references to Jacqueline Kennedy in those oral histories that had been made by government officials, foreign heads of state or other diplomatic figures and which were then opened.

Also look at my two-volume history First Ladies, most especially the first few chapters of volume two, which cover the Kennedy years. Since its publication I have disclosed that Mrs. Onassis directly though discreetly helped me with that material (in fact, she acted practically as an editor, though not removing anything but rather adding). There are also references to her interest in foreign relations prior to her marriage in volume one. While I did another book, The Kennedy White House, I did not focus quite so intently on this aspect of her White House years.

Another good book which will illustrate Jacqueline Kennedy's personal relationship with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is The Other Side of Mrs. Kennedy, which came out several years ago. The documentation in this book presents a good example of one bit of trouble you may encounter. Quite often, as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy would hand write letters directly to heads of state and circumvent the State Department or other officials for any clearance: this was especially true of those with whom she'd developed a personal rapport, such as India's Nehru and France's DeGaulle. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is the famous letter she wrote to Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev on her last night in the White House, addressing the issue of nuclear proliferation and her fear that it would not be the more responsible larger nations like the U.S. or U.S.S.R. which would resort to the use of mass destruction weaponry but rather smaller rouge nations. There was no copy of this handwritten letter made and it was not released, I believe, until several years later. I know that, for example, Krushchev himself finally released the full text of the letter in his memoirs (or they might have been in a biography edited by his son).

The Women's Christian Temperance Union and the two wives of Woodrow Wilson

There is no evidence at all that either Ellen Axson Wilson or Edith Bolling Galt Wilson were either advocates of temperance or members or supporters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. It is known that during the 1912 election, when it was reported that Ellen Wilson approved of women being able to smoke cigarettes, she personally handed out copies of her written denial of this inaccuracy to reporters, declaring that she disliked smoking by both genders. Cigarette smoking by both men and women was one of the "sins" against which the WCTU also campaigned. In that sense one could perhaps stretch to say Ellen Wilson "supported sentiments against tobacco use as advocated by the WCTU." There is no mention in either her public press coverage or private papers to suggest she either opposed alcohol consumption or prohibited it being served to herself, her family and her guests.

The same is true of Wilson's second wife Edith. Although the Wilsons were in the White House when the 18th Amendment was passed, it was during the tense time of his partial recovery from his devastating stroke and her efforts to keep the apparatus of the presidency functioning from his sickroom. They did no entertaining at all, save for a later, brief welcome to the King and Queen of Belgium at which tea was served. As far as their personal use, there is no indication that they imbibed in alcoholic beverages, although it was quite common for doctors at the time to prescribe a shot of whiskey as a stimulant in some instances and this may have been the case with President Wilson. You might consult some of the more recent works published on the topic of his illness if you wish to investigage this further, including Phyllis Lee Levin's book, Edith & Woodrow, published in 2001 by Simon and Schuster. Edith Wilson, of course, long outlived her husband who died in 1924, three years after his presidency ended. Although Prohibition remained the law of the land, the widowed Mrs. Wilson quite openly served alcohol to her guests at the Wilson House on S Street. She was also, apparently, someone who enjoyed a stiff drink herself: she was widely known among her friends to prefer the brand Virginia Gentleman whiskey. Whether it was because the name conjured up images of her late husband or late father - both of whom were born in that state, or because of the alcohol content - we don't know!

One last observation on all this. The only two First Ladies known to have been "teetotalers" were Lucy Hayes and Frances Cleveland, and neither formally allied themselves with the WCTU, likely out of fear that such a commitment might alienate their husbands' political supporters. Otherwise First Ladies in the era from 1869 to 1923 (Grant through Harding Administrations), when the temperance movement was at its strongest, both served and drank alcoholic beverages, usually light wines with dinner, champagne or whiskey punch. Florence Harding, of course, famously permitted the serving of alcohol in the White House family quarters but not in public during prohibition. Grace Coolidge, Lou Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt - the remaining First Ladies whose tenure coincided with Prohibition - did not. However, the WCTU was a powerful force in politics and as hostesses of the White House, the First Ladies often greeted the group's delegations who asked to be received at receptions. Finally, there were other causes and efforts which the WCTU sponsored that did not relate to alcohol but various charities and goodwill efforts. I know, for example, that Frances Cleveland supported at least one such movement - while also refusing to respond to the national WCTU demand, made at one of their conventions in the late 1880's that the First Lady stop wearing low-cut and sleeveless dressess because it was a bad moral influence on young women of the day.

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Inaugural Gowns

Caroline Harrison, and her daughter Mary Harrison McKee (who lived in the White House with her parents, husband and children and who later served briefly as White House hostess, from October 1892 to March 1893 from the time of her mother's death to the Inauguration of her father's successor) both had American-made gowns which they wore to the Inaugural Balls on 4 March 1889. However, extant records of what was worn by previous and later presidential wives and hostesses to their President's Inaugural Ball shows they did likewise - although the further one goes back, the less clear are the details of these clothes. What made the two Harrison women's dresses of particular note was the effort to weave into the design a motif of a native American tree nut. I believe it was the acorn. The best source on this will be Jennifer Caps, the curator of the Benjamin Harrison Home in Indianapolis, Indiana. Incidentally, the museum there also has a large collection of the clothing worn by the Harrison family women and it might provide further clues.

The James Garfield home and estate, "Lawnfield," in Mentor, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland, might be contacted for more information on whether or not Lucretia Garfield disliked what was originally a light purple colored dress which, I recall, faded fairly quickly in color. In looking at excerpts of her diary entry from the 1881 Inaugural Ball, however, I discovered that she focused more on the physical strain of standing and shaking hands for two hours with a crush of strangers at the Ball. I do not have access to the full and unedited version of her diary, however. That is located in the Lucretia Garfield Papers at the Library of Congress.

The story that Edith Roosevelt "re-modeled" her clothes to rewear is a misnomer. She wearied quickly of the press inquiries for details on what clothes she would wear to particular events; she did not have a large collection of expensive clothes nor did she have an interest in spending one to accumulate one. Instead, over time, as press inquiries were made to her social secretary Isabella Hagner about the clothes, Edith Roosevelt had her witty and creative stepdaughter Alice Roosevelt simply offer vivid and different descriptions of the same piece of clothing Edith Roosevelt had already been seen wearing, changing the adjective preceeding a color, for example (blue, light blue, periwinkle blue, sky blue, royal blue, etc.) or the sheen, cut or length of fabric. In an age before photography became routine in newspapers, in this way the Roosevelt women managed to give the public impression that she owned and wore a larger clothing collection that she actually did - without technically "lying" to the press.

One immediate thought - there were smaller, compact inkwell pens at one point. I am not sure if they existed in 1844-1845, but some of those I've seen from the 1890's could fold within its own tube so it was more of a short stub of a pen rather than the elongated one we think of today. Through the years I have seen a number of photographs taken of Julia Tyler; most of them are from her later years, as a widow. In no images of her, unfortunately - whether it be painting, engraving or photograph, does she seem to be wearing the pen.

However, in 1987 I did unearth a forgotten dauggereotype that was made of her by an Anthony Studios in New York. She is actually holding a pen in that picture. Interestingly, this image is the earliest known photograph taken of an incumbent First Lady. As you probably know, she was 24 when she eloped with President Tyler - and she certainly looks it in this image. I used copies of the image in two of my books, First Ladies, volume 1, and also America's First Families. This image is also possibly available on the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division website.

Regarding my research on the Saxton family, I unfortunately found nothing at all regarding George Saxton and Annie George. My accounts are all from the newspapers of the time, the small publication put out anonymously by someone in Canton at the time and secondary sources.

It seems that while George Saxton lived at the Saxton House with his father, sister Mary and her family, and the McKinleys when they were in Canton during the Congressional and gubernatorial years, there was little engagement between him and the future President and his wife. His murder of course did shock Mary and Ida - but beyond the shock, there was not even any wide discussion of him in later years. He seems to have somehow emotionally cut out of any genuine engagement with his family. Even in the early letters from Europe that Ida and Mary wrote to him there is a sense of his disconnected quality. In one letter from around the time of George's late teenage years, Mr. Saxton seems to make sarcastic reference to the fact that George did nothing worthwhile except pick apples and tap maple trees on their farm property in Minerva. I found it really extraordinary too that the wealthy Saxton family which so highly prized education and who insisted that Ida and Mary receive superior educations as young women, apparently never insisted or pushed or urged George to seek a higher education. As far as I discovered, he never went to high school or college.

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The East Wing: A History of the Staff to First Ladies

The story of how First Ladies came to have a professional staff is, in and of itself, a fascinating glimpse into the growth East Wing of the federal government, the increased political stature of presidential wives, the enlarging public expectations of these women to consider the American people their constituency. It also reveals elements of the changing forms of societal norms, expansion of technology and the relevance of social life to political success.

Federal Funding

Today, the staff of a First Lady takes its offices in the East Wing of the 18-acre "White House complex," also consisting of the "Residence," and "West Wing." The staff is salaried by public funds through annual executive branch appropriations approved by Congress. These funds have been specifically appropriated to the East Wing staff since the Carter Administration with law that essentially states that their responsibilities are to aid the presidential spouse in efforts to aid the president in their official duties. The first federal funding for a staff member to specifically aid a First Lady in the clerical work of interfacing with the press and public and planning White House entertainments occurred during the 1901-1909 tenure of Edith Roosevelt; her secretary, Belle Hagner, went on to later return to the position under Ellen Wilson, from 1913 to 1914. The East Wing was built to provide office space for military personnel in the White House during World War II. Since military aides served as social aides at presidential entertainments, the social office naturally situated there.

Social Duties

Before that time, the increasing need for some professional help to First Ladies in carrying out the traditional responsibilities of White House hostess was met any way it could be - by wives of presidential aides and clerks, relatives who were often full-time residents in the White House during the old "social season" from November to April, or other government clerks who were "loaned" from different executive branch agencies. Martha Washington, for example, relied on the help of Polly Lear, wife of President Washington's primary aide Tobias Lear. Her role was essentially to prepare guest lists, send invitations and see to the smooth operations of receptions and other public entertainments. Mrs. Washington's immediate successor, Abigail Adams, depended upon her male housekeeper and his wife, the Brieslers, to enlarge their routine responsibilities of ordering food and maintaining the houses the Adamses lived in, to include social events. Julia Tyler's sister Margaret Gardiner worked as her social secretary. Sarah Polk used the wife of her husband's nephew as her social secretary, while he served as the President's private secretary. Mary Lincoln was helped by the housekeeping staff already in place and salaried by the government. Caroline Harrison's widowed niece Mary Lord Dimmock not only lived in the White House with her aunt and worked as her secretary - she later married her widowed uncle, when he was former President. Frances Cleveland paid out of her own pocket the salary of her friend Minnie Alexander to work for her.

Public Contact

Beyond the entertaining responsibilities of First Ladies, these women were called upon from the start by not only American but world citizens seeking financial or other help in dire situations, requesting souvenirs, seeking commercial or artistic endorsement, asking their views on issues, expressing their opinions about the President or policy, or trying to get them to intercede with officials on a matter pending before the government. Responses were handled in an ad-hoc manner over the years. There is evidence that Dolley Madison read and responded to some of her public mail. Louisa Adams even initiated correspondence with a magazine editor when she read a false account touching on the president's personal life. Many of the public letters never reached the eyes of the First Ladies, being first vetted and then handled by the President's private secretary. By the Lincoln era, the letters to First Ladies were routinely opened and read by those who handled presidential correspondence or an enlarging typing pool, once the typewriter came into use in the executive offices in the 1880's. Still, by the late 19th century, however, there were examples of those First Ladies who routinely handwrote their own responses to the public, such as Julia Grant and Frances Cleveland who composed thank you notes acknowledging things sent to them, or accepting or refusing invitations to join charity efforts. More frequently, however, responses from First Ladies were written by executive clerks and signed by the women. The most interesting examples of this were the letters Ida McKinley signed in response to public inquiries - the body of the letters were handwritten by the President himself. With the establishment of the First Lady's Secretary as a federal position in 1901, most often these secretaries were given the added responsibility of responding to public inquiries, and signing their own names with dictated responses from First Ladies or on form letters (some of which were first generated for First Ladies in the 1890's). Thus, women like Alice Blech (secretary to Helen Taft), Edith Helm (Edith Wilson), Laura Harlan (Florence Harding), Mary Randolph (Grace Coolidge), Mildred Campbell (Lou Hoover) Malvina Thompson (Eleanor Roosevelt), Reathel Odum (Bess Truman), and Mary Jane McCaffree (Mamie Eisenhower) became familiar figures in Washington and names across the country, increasingly finding themselves the subject of media publicity.

Media Relations

As the increasing sophistication of television in the late 1950's and early 1960's converged with the arrival of the youthful and popular Jacqueline Kennedy, the First Lady's office was overwhelmed with requests for information and cooperation on profiles they were doing about her in all formats - newspaper, magazine, books, radio, television. Thus, the first Press Secretary to a First Lady, Pamela Turnure, was hired with entirely separate responsibilities from the Social Secretary. With Lady Bird Johnson's tenure, the ascendance of the East Wing was assured by the hiring of Liz Carpenter, a Press Secretary who had been a professional working journalist and knew not only how to satisfy but sell editors on a story peg about the First Lady, in effect creating publicity about her boss's numerous activities. Carpenter structured the offices with professional management, serving as unofficial staff director as well and creating a strong liaison with the President's staff in efforts to coordinate the activities, media and efforts of both principals. She also designated specific responsibilities to assistant press secretaries and even temporarily requisitioned the West wing press aide and later CNN president Tom Johnson to handle media relations on the bridegroom of presidential daughter Luci Johnson in the days leading up to her wedding, covered by the international media. Particularly in the area of handling media questions or generating stories, tensions inevitably grew between the East and West Wings, the former seeking to control the latter if public controversies or other issues were raised by the First Lady that seemed to seriously impact the President.

Other Positions

Media interest in First Ladies grew in conjunction with the women's movement in the 1970's and staffs of Pat Nixon and Betty Ford encountered increasing pressures from many sides - the West Wing, the media, and special interest groups. With Pat Nixon's extensive domestic and international travels, and Betty Ford's involvement in domestic policy such as the fight for a constitutional equal rights amendment, the first, formal speechwriting was regularly conducted by multi-tasking staff members who also handled other new types of duties for First Ladies, such as scheduling and advance, or special projects. During Rosalynn Carter's tenure, the first Chief of Staff, Kit Dobelle, was finally hired to oversee all operations. Nancy Reagan became the first First Lady to hire a male Chief of Staff, James Rosebush, Barbara Bush the first to hire an African-American Press Secretary, Anna Perez, and Laura Bush the first to hire a male Press Secretary, Gordon Jondroe. With her own activism on many substantive issues of her husband's Administration, Hillary Clinton relied on members of her staff, most frequently her second Chief of Staff Melanne Verveer, to work closely on policy-related issues with the President's staff, thus more closely integrating the two staffs than at any other previous time.

The first presidents' wife to write a book that was published in her lifetime was Helen "Nellie" Taft. In 1914, two years after leaving the White House she wrote her memoirs, Recollections of Full Years.

The other First Ladies who wrote and published their memoirs after leaving the White House were: Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson (based on excerpts of her daily taped recordings of a White House diary), Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton. However, there are several interesting footnotes to this:

Julia Grant actually wrote her memoirs in the 1890's but was advised not to publish them because she was too harsh in her assessment of her husband's political and military colleagues. They were posthumously published in 1975.
Grace Coolidge wrote a series of articles in American Magazine in the early 1930's that consisted of her White House memoirs, treated topically, but did not choose to have the articles published as a book.
Lou Hoover co-translated with her husband an ancient Latin text on mineralogy before she was First Lady - but not her memoirs.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the first volume of her memoirs, covering her early years, while still First Lady.
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote numerous articles and contributed to different books before she became First Lady. Following her husband's election as President, she published a small booklet-magazine called Babies, Just Babies about maternal care. She also wrote numerous books - besides her memoirs - as a former First Lady, including her last one, published posthumously, called Tomorrow is Now.
Nancy Reagan wrote and published an early, first version of her life called Nancy in time for the 1980 presidential race of her husband.
Nancy Reagan wrote and published To Love a Child, a book about the Foster Grandparent program in 1981, while First Lady.
Barbara Bush "ghostwrote" two books by her dogs, one while she was the vice-president's wife, C. Fred's Story, and the other, Millie's Book, while First Lady.
Hillary Clinton wrote It Takes a Village to Raise a Child in 1995 - and also read portions of it for a books-on-tape version which won a Grammy for the Spoken-Word Category.
Betty Ford wrote a second volume of her autobiography that actually returned to her earlier life covered in her first book - but in her second book, Glad Awakening, written once she had been in recovery.
Although Jacqueline Kennedy never wrote her own White House memoirs, she did quietly aid in the publishing of her White House "story" from her perspective by quietly editing in 1989 - when she was a professional publishing editor herself - the chapters on her tenure in the second volume of First Ladies (1991), a fact not disclosed publicly until a July 1994 Town & Country article by the book's author...yes, me, Carl Sferrazza Anthony.
Former First Ladies who published books in addition to their memoirs were Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan.
Barbara Bush is the only former First Lady who wrote a memoir about her life as a former First Lady.
The earliest book written and published by an incumbent "First Lady" who was not a president's wife but a president's sister, was the unmarried Rose Elizabeth Cleveland, whose brother was bachelor President Grover Cleveland (before he married his wife Frances in the White House in June of 1886. In fact, "Miss Rose," as the nation's newspapers dubbed her, "Libbie" to her family - published several books while in the White House and it launched her career. She wrote literary criticism and even works on proper social roles and behavior - not quite etiquette, not quite sociology, but a bit of both.
The earliest book ever "written" by a First Lady was unintended and dreaded by her as a possibility after her death - these were the published letters of Abigail Adams in 1848, Letters of Mrs. Adams - Wife of John Adams.
A similar book was "written" by Dolley Madison - Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States, as posthumously published by her niece Lucia Cutts in 1886.

Surprisingly, no other First Ladies wrote what would be considered strictly a "children's book" but Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a Christmas book that was readable for children. Of course, the two "as-told-to" books that Barbara Bush wrote as being memoirs of her dogs, were largely picture books with her commentary and could be read by and understood by children, but they weren't "children's books" in the industry sense.

In terms of writing with their daughter - no. That is a first. Edith Roosevelt contributed a chapter to a book that included chapters written by her son. It was called Cleared for Strange Ports and came out in the 1920's.

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Foreign Trips of Incumbent First Ladies

As you may know, Edith Carow Roosevelt, wife of Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied her husband to the recently- WorldMap independent nation of Panama on 9 November 1907, making her the first incumbent First Lady to leave the United States.

More famously, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, sailed from Hoboken, New Jersey to Brest, France on 4 December, 1918, with her husband Woodrow Wilson, for his participation in the Paris peace conference held after World War I. She joined him in also visiting England and Italy; they returned to the U.S. on 15 February, 1919. She thus holds the record of an incumbent First Lady being out of the U.S., a total of 72 days.

Grace Coolidge traveled with her husband, incumbent President Calvin Coolidge to Havana, Cuba in January of 1928, where he delivered the opening address of a Pan-American Conference.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first incumbent First Lady to travel solo. Her trips were made as a representative of the American Red Cross during World War II: to Ireland and England in 1942, to active U.S. military installations in Australia, New Zealand, Guadalcanal and other South Pacific islands in 1943, and to non-combat military bases in Central, South American and Caribbean basin nations in 1944. She became the first incumbent First Lady to also make such trip by air flight, over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Jacqueline Kennedy's famous meetings with Charles DeGaulle in Paris, Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna and Queen Elizabeth in London, occurred when she accompanied her husband during his first trans-Atlantic trip, in May and early June of 1961, visiting France, Austria and England. At the end of the presidential tour, she went on her own to Greece, thus marking her first solo trip. She would also join her husband to Venezuela and Colombia in December 1961 and Mexico in June 1962. She continued to make solo trips. In April 1962 she was designated as a "goodwill ambassador" of the U.S. government during trips to India and Pakistan, and during her visit to the latter nation she proceeded to the Khyber Pass and the Afghanistan border. In August of 1962, she took a vacation in Italy; even though the White House listed her trip as a "private citizen" she interceded with the U.S. government to provide disaster relief during an earthquake that took place while she was in that nation. She had a similar quasi-official status when she visited Greece and Morocco in October and early November of 1963.

Lady Bird Johnson made no solo trips to foreign nations as an incumbent First Lady.

In combination with the foreign trips she made with her husband Richard Nixon and those on her own, Pat Nixon for many years held the record as the most traveled First Lady. Her most notable and highly-visible trip with her husband was to China in 1972. However, she initiated her own humanitarian trip to Peru, when that mountainous nation was hit by a devastating earthquake in June 1970. In January of 1972, with the official but temporary designation as "the president's ambassador" she visited three African nations - Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Liberia. She addressed the parliaments of all three nations, discussing American state policy on Rhodesia and South Africa. In March of 1974, she made a solo trip to the inaugurations of South American presidents in Venezuela and Brazil.

Betty Ford was the last incumbent First Lady who made no foreign trips independent of her husband. Since 1977, each incumbent First Lady has made numerous foreign trips, both with their husbands and on their own. Among the most noteworthy have been those of Rosalynn Carter as "the president's representative" in 1977 to multiple Central and South American nations where she discussed serious policy issues including exports, human rights and nuclear weaponry, and in 1980 to Thailand as part of a global emergency relief effort on behalf of Cambodian refugees. Nancy Reagan attended the wedding of Prince Charles to Diane Spencer in London, England, in July 1981. Barbara Bush led the U.S. delegation attending the inauguration of the president of Costa Rica in May of 1989. Finally, in September of 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, giving a strong policy speech that rebuked the host nation's violations of women's and children's rights.

It is difficult to specifically state who is the most "traveled" First Lady since such a designation could be determined by several different factors: how many different nations were visited, whether return trips to the same nation are to be counted, whether "travel" means one trip to one nation, or one trip with several stops (for example, on one of her first foreign trips with her husband, Pat Nixon went to Guam, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Romania, England and South Vietnam).