First Ladies Library Blog

The recently widowed Jacqueline Kennedy arrives with her daughter Caroline from the White House to their new temporary Washington home, December 6, 1963. (AP)

Overlapping the years that her predecessors Harriet Lane and Julia Grant were living in Washington, the widowed Lucretia Garfield spent many years during the winter social season in Washington, having retained ownership of the home she and her husband had purchased there when he was first elected to Congress.

The widowed Lucretia Garfield, who returned to live in Washington during the winter social seasons. (NFLL)

She had not done so, however, immediately after the assassination of her husband. Following the funeral of the late President James Garfield his widow and their five children returned to their rambling farmhouse in Mentor, Ohio. It was not until about a decade later that she apparently felt comfortable enough to return to the city she had last lived in when her husband was alive.

Mrs. Garfield lived in the Washington home at 13th and I Streets that the family had owned since her husband’s congressional years. (Garfield National Historic Site/NPS)

Mrs. Garfield was also a frequent guest of her successors Frances Cleveland and Ida McKinley, sometimes sharing honors with Harriet Lane and Julia Grant. Still, it may be speculated that she was never entirely happy being back in Washington.

Less than ten years after she had initially returned there in the wintertime, Mrs. Garfield had a winter home built for herself in Pasadena, California and it was there that she lived out the larger part of each year remaining until her death in 1918.

Not until the 1970s did another presidential widow decide to leave the retirement home she had shared with her husband and move back to Washington, D.C.

Following the death of former President Dwight Eisenhower in 1969, his widow Mamie Eisenhower initially visited her son in Belgium for several months, where he was serving as U.S. Ambassador. She then spent the winter months in Palm Springs, California.

The Wardman Park where Mrs. Eisenhower lived for a time as a widow, (jbg.com)

When it came time to finally facing her life alone in the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania home she’d shared with her husband, however, Mamie Eisenhower decided to instead move for long periods of time into a private suite in a building of exclusive residences at the Sheraton-Park, which was connected by a long solarium to a building that functioned as a traditional hotel.

President Nixon escorts his wife Pat and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. (Life)

It was the same building she had lived in during World War II, while her husband was Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces.

At other times, she actually returned for long stays at her more famous former Washington home, the White House.

With her grandson David being married to the daughter of President Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower became something of an “honorary grandmother” to the First Family and shared their holidays and weekends, always occupying the Queen’s Suite on the second floor of the executive mansion.

Of the eight women whose husbands died while they were president, only two of them moved from the White House to live in another location in Washington, both intending to make the capital their permanent home – yet neither of them deciding to stay on there longer than a year.

The Willard Hotel, where Florence Harding took a suite. (LC)

Following the funeral of her husband, who had died suddenly in August of 1923,  Florence Harding immediately returned to the White House where she began the task of packing all of their possessions and the late president’s personal papers.

She then proceeded directly to Washington estate of her confidante Evalyn Walsh McLean on Wisconsin Avenue, a vast property that was dubbed “Friendship.”

It was there, through the waning weeks of summer, that Mrs. Harding began culling papers she deemed to be contradictory to the best presentation of the Harding legacy. “We must be loyal to Warren’s memory,” she told an aide who helped her with the daily burning of private papers. She then returned for a period of several months to her hometown of Marion, Ohio with the remaining papers which were then organized and stored.

In the new year of 1924, Florence Harding returned to live in Washington, D.C., leasing n a suite at the Willard Hotel, not far from the White House.

The widowed Florence Harding returned to Washington, taking a suite at the Willard Hotel. (NFLL)

The presidential widow attended a congressional tribute to her husband in February but soon had to endure the shocking revelations emerging from the daily congressional investigations then being conducted, looking into scandals caused by former Harding Administration officials who had been close friends to her and the late president.

It was not these embarrassing and infuriating realizations, however, which had her leaving the capital city in July of that year.

When the homeopathic physician she had come to believe was the only person who could keep her alive, Charles Sawyer, was forced to resign his position as Brigadier-General of the Army Medical Corps, a job she had secured for him three years earlier, he returned to Marion, where he ran a sanitarium. Believing she had no other choice, Florence Harding reluctantly left Washington at his insistence. Sawyer died two months later, Mrs., Harding two months after that, in November of 1924.

Jacqueline Kennedy exiting the private Georgetown home on N Street that she purchased by lived in for only four months in 1964. (Pinterest)

Following the horrific trauma of having her husband assassination in the car seat right beside her, Jacqueline Kennedy steeled herself to nonetheless manage the packing of all of her family’s items from the White House family quarters while friends hastily sought some immediate housing solution for her and her two young children.

One of the Democratic Party’s leading figures and a former ambassador, Averell Harriman arranged to vacate the home where he and his wife Marie lived, in the Georgetown section of the city, to permit Mrs. Kennedy occupancy of it, while she searched for a permanent home.

Although she did purchase one several blocks away and relocated there, before the summer of 1964 had begun it was already clear to her that trying to continue living in the same area of the city where she and the late president had resided in a series of homes before his 1960 election would be a constant reminder of their years together.

Jacqueline Kennedy with her visiting sister Lee Radziwill, Secret Service agent and decorator Billy Baldwin leaving her home, where photographers remained on duty across the street at all hours. (Corbis)

Even the larger context of remaining in the city would be problematic she realized, her home becoming the object of curiosity to tourists, dozens of whom who would for hours outside the house waiting for a glimpse of her or her children.

She abandoned Washington, and in the later fall of 1964 moved to New York City, where she would remain for thirty years, until her death in 1994. While family events and then professional work as an editor would take her back to Washington on occasion, she usually left before the night fell.

During her tenure as both a U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, former First Lady Hillary Clinton called her Embassy Row house in Washington home. (AFP)

A record number of former First Ladies decided that they preferred living in the city where they had once held sway as the nation’s most famous woman. Whether they continued to live there or returned after the presidency with their husbands, or as widows, a total of twelve former First Ladies would chose to make Washington, D.C. their home.

The Washington residence of former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady-Senator-Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton. (Washington Post)

One outgoing presidential couple were unique in their life right after the White House, with the former President going directly to their home in New York while the former First Lady moved into their new Washington home.

In 2001, Hillary Clinton began her term as U.S. Senator from New York and lived in a house she and her husband had recently purchased for the purpose of serving as her home base during the week. Even while traveling the world as Secretary of State from 2009 until 2013 it was her residence in the capital city. It remains so.

During the Victorian Age, there was a time when it seemed there was always at least one former First Lady assuming the “Queen Mother” type role, living in Washington and always an honored guest at the White House.

Widowed Julia Tyler. (VA Historical Society)

Widowed in 1862 during the Civil War when former president John Tyler died as a member of the Confederate Congress, Julia Tyler arrived back in Washington ten years later, resuming residency in the city where she had first met her husband and become his bride.

In January of 1872, she rented a narrow clapboard townhouse on what was then called Fayette Street, later simply renamed to the numerical 35th Street, in the Georgetown section.

Thirty-fifth Street in Georgetown, along which Julia Tyler rented a home in the 1870s. (willow.com)

Having converted to Catholicism, she was adamant about enrolling her youngest daughter, Julie, in the Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School for Girls.

Mrs. Tyler’s home was located within walking distance of the school, thus permitting her daughter to live with her.

Two months after returning to the capital, her visit there with successor Julia Grant received considerable publicity for her donation of her portrait to its collection and for display there.

Self-titling herself as “Mrs. Ex-President Tyler,” she would go on to help receive guests in a place of honor at receptions hosted by some of her successors including Lucy Hayes, Molly Arthur McElroy and Rose Cleveland, and maintained a correspondence with Lucretia Garfield.

Harriet Lane Johnston’s Washington home on I and 17th streets. (first ladies.org)

There was a similar pattern to the Washington life of another former First Lady, although she had never been married to the President she served as hostess for; he was James Buchanan, her uncle.

Harriet Lane Johnston, 1898, (Smithsonian)

Seeking to move beyond his death and those of two children and husband, Harriet Lane Johnston sold the late president’s estate and her Baltimore home.

Harriet Lane then created a new life for herself by purchasing a Washington home in 1892, which became her primary residence for the rest of her life.

She was an honored guest at White House dinners and receptions hosted by the Clevelands, Harrisons, McKinleys and Roosevelts.

The widowed Mrs. Grant’s first of two homes in Washington. (Google Maps)

When her daughter separated from her British husband and then permanently returned to the United States, Julia Grant went to live with her in Washington.

Elderly Julia Grant. (Pinterest)

After a brief lease residency at 2018 R Street, NW, the former First Lady and her daughter bought a marble-front mansion at 2111 Massachusetts Avenue that had belonged to Senator George F. Edmunds, of Vermont.

With her independent wealth, Mrs. Grant was able to indulge her love of entertaining, hosting an open reception every Tuesday afternoon during the winter social season months.

She died in her Washington home in 1902.

Former President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the only presidential couple to date that remained in Washington, D.C. after moving out of the White House. (Library of Congress)

(This article is adapted from a response written to a media inquiry)

A moving truck outside the new S Street home of former President and Mrs. Wilson, the day they left the White House. (AP)

Within range of microphones last week, President Obama let it slip out that it was likely he and the First Lady would remain as residents of Washington, D.C. once his Administration ends in January of 2017. He suggested that they were likely to do so in order to permit their youngest daughter Sasha to complete her high school education at the same school, rather than remove her from familiar surroundings and friends to be transferred to a school in their home city of Chicago.

It would not be the first time since a former President and First Lady have chosen to remain in the capital city right after moving out of the White House, but it would be only the second time.

The only other instance of this occurring was nearly a century ago when, upon turning the presidency over to Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson and First Lady Edith Wilson went directly to the private home they had only recently purchased on S Street.

March 15, 1946, Eleanor Roosevelt (l) and Edith Wilson (r), at a Washington dinner honoring Mrs. Roosevelt at a US Delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization, hosted by the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee. (Corbis)

The former president only lived there for three more years, dying in February of 1924.

Edith Wilson, however, would live on there by herself for almost four more decades.

She received European royalty and presidential families there, maintaining the public rooms as a shrine to her beloved husband. Mrs. Wilson was often at the White House under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

She died in her home in December of 1961, but not before entertaining Jackie Kennedy there for lunch several months earlier.

For almost three years, however, there were two former Presidents and two former First Ladies living in Washington, D.C. at the same time. Just months after Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson retired from the presidency and moved to S Street, his immediate predecessor William Howard Taft and Nellie Taft relocated to Washington to live in aWyoming Avenue home within walking distance of him.

That summer of 1921, incumbent President Warren Harding appointed Taft to the one position he had always coveted, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On her way home to Washington from a Mexican trip, Nellie Taft checks a list with a customs officer. April 5, 1936. (AP)

Soon he and Nellie Taft were frequently back at the White House joining the Hardings and then the Coolidges.

After Taft’s death in 1930, Nellie Taft continued to live on at Wyoming Avenue.

Although she was respected as the widow of both a president and chief justice at numerous events and ceremonies with successors such as Lou Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt,

The Taft house in Washington. (Washington Post)

Mrs. Taft lived a busy life in Washington largely outside of public notice. She rode streetcars to take in lectures, theater, films and concerts up until her death at home in the capital in 1944.

She and her husband became the fist of only two couples to be buried across the Potomac in Arlington National Cemetery.

A rare photo of former President John Quincy Adams. (LC)

The other President and First Lady who went right from the White House to a private home in Washington were John Quincy and Louisa Adams.

In March of 1829, they proceeded to a rented home on Meridian Hill but after their long summer and early autumn back in New England, the former president returned to the capital intending to have a purpose for being there.

A silhouette of Louisa Adams. (ebay)

In 1830 he ran and won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and began this new phase of his career in the following year.

Louisa Adams had been disgusted with politics and had even threatened to not live permanently in Washington because of the stress she believed his new position would create in their household.

By then, the former President and First Lady were living in a townhouse on the east street that faced Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House. A bit more history was made  in 1838 when their new neighbor moved into the house right next store.

It was another legendary White House resident, Dolley Madison.

The corner building was the Washington home of the widowed Dolley Madison while former President and Mrs. John Quincy Adams resided in the row house next to her. (streetsofwashington.com)

Following the 1836 death of her husband, the former First Lady settled into the townhouse on the northeast corner of Lafayette Square. “She is a woman of placid, equable temperament,” wrote former President Adams.

From this house, Mrs. Madison would hold court, especially on New Year’s Day when not only whoever was the incumbent President and First Lady, but members of the diplomatic corps, Cabinet, Supreme Court, House and Senate would pay a customary call on her.

Elderly Dolley Madison and niece Anna Payne who lived with her in Washington. (NPG)

In a sense, Dolley Madison became “Queen Mother” of the nation, a role she could not have fulfilled from anywhere but the capital city.

It was a common sight in the city to see the two former First Ladies function as a social duo, great friends attending card parties and congressional speeches together.

Dolley Madison was able to comfort Louisa Adams when John Quincy Adams died in February of 1848, but she followed him seventeen months later. Louisa Adams continued to live in Washington until her death four years later.

Nancy Reagan enjoys the solitude of her hammock at the Reagan Ranch. (RRPL)

With the news this weekend that former First Lady Nancy Reagan has died, the National First Ladies’ Library offers a tribute to a woman who offered her enthusiastic support for its creation, development and realization. When the NFLL Founder and President Mary Regula first contacted Mrs. Reagan, she decided to lend her name to the organization and became an honorary chairman, helping to establish the institution and later donating personal items for its personal collection.

Her life would find the woman born by the name of Ann Frances Robbins living across the span of the nation. There are many different perspectives to remember her life, but perhaps one of the least considered is how well she knew the country, as a resident of different regions – long before she began campaigning by bus, car, train and plane in the three presidential races her husband made, in 1976, 1980 and 1984.

She was born on July 5, 1921 in Flushing, New York, in the New York City borough of Queens. With her mother Edie Luckett pursing a professional career out on the road and divorcing her birth father Kenneth Robbins, their only child would be moving south.

Young Nancy, as she was nicknamed  spent her earliest years being raised by her maternal aunt and her husband in Bethesda, Maryland. Enrolled at the Quaker school Sidwell Friends, she made her first visit to the White House as a child during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, when she attended the annual Easter Egg Roll.

Upon her mother’s 1929 remarriage to neurosurgeon Loyal Davis, she moved to his high-rise apartment overlooking Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Becoming active in the Windy City’s young social life, Nancy Davis was an excellent student at the Girls’ Latin School.

She would then move back east again, to attend college at Smith College, in Northhampton, Massachusetts. There she majored in drama and took part in many of the theater department productions, be they drama or comedy. It was soon down to New York City, where she broke into show business as a stage actress.

Given the opportunity to make a screen test, however, Nancy Davis soon headed to Los Angeles, California. Except for her eight years as the American First Lady, when she lived in Washington, D.C., she would remain a lifelong resident of the Golden State.

Before her 1952 wedding to Ronald Reagan, while working as a film actress under contract at MGM, she would have several different residences around the city, from Hollywood to Westwood. Through marriage and motherhood, Nancy Reagan would live for the longest period in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles until she and her husband left for the White House. During the presidency they resided in the penthouse suite of a Century City hotel, as well as enjoying their ranch near Santa Barbara. After the presidency, the Reagans bought a home in the Bel Air section. There the former President died in 2004 and there the former First Lady died the other day.

Nancy Reagan had the longest-living mother among First Ladies and is herself now the second-longest living, surviving some twenty days longer than Lady Bird Johnson, who died in 2005. With the passing of Mrs. Reagan, there are now five living First Ladies: Rosalynn Carter, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama.

Nancy Reagan with husband and friends on the South Lawn, July 4th 1981. (RRPL)

The Reagans at the 1983 annual White House Easter Egg Roll, by then a tradition over a century old. (RRPL)

Nancy Reagan meets the press during a 1980 campaign trip. (lehnews.wordpress.com)

Nancy Reagan with her husband making a joint 1984 campaign appearance. (Reagan Presidential Library)

Nancy Reagan arriving for the London wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in July, 1981. (RRPL)

Known for her stylish taste in clothing, First Lady Nancy Davis Reagan is seen in a black velvet gown in 1982.

Nancy Reagan with her parents, Loyal and Edie Davis. While Davis was technically her stepfather, Nancy considered him her only real father.

Nancy Reagan with the President’s Chief of Staff Don Regan. When the two later had a falling out, Regan would soon after resign under pressure.  (RRPL)

President and Nancy Reagan looking at the Great Wall in China, April 29, 1984.

The future First Lady Nancy Davis (Reagan) posing for a Hollywood publicity still. (RRPL)

Nancy Davis outside her Hollywood bungalow apartment. (RRPL)

Nancy Reagan speaks at a White House Conference on Drug Abuse and Families, 1982. (Reagan Library)

Nancy Reagan, Betty Ford and Rosalynn Carter attending the 1982 funeral of Bess Truman. (UPI)

Nancy Reagan visiting her elderly mother Edie Davis, who lived to be 100 years old. The two were very close.

Nancy Reagan on the podium, her husband on the screen behind her.

Nancy Reagan campaigns with her husband in North Carolina in 1980.

Former President Reagan celebrated his birthday in 1996 with Nancy Reagan. (The Reagan Library)

US President Barack Obama (R) speaks with former US first lady Nancy Reagan (L) after signing the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, DC, June 2, 2009. (Getty)

Nancy Reagan in a World War II theatrical review at Smith College known as the Factory Follies (AP)

The Reagans with their children Michael, Ron, Patti, their spouses and grandchildren.

Maryland resident Anne Francis Robbins, later to become Chicagoan Nancy Davis Reagan.

Ellen Wison and Edith Wilson, the two wives of Woodrow Wilson in a composite image.

With the dawn of the 20th century, lines were more sharply drawn between “drys,” who were those who supported the growing movement that called for a national ban on the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, and “wets,” who opposed it.

Edith Roosevelt herself refrained from drinking alcohol, the pain of witnessing her father’s own addiction to it having permanently affected her. However, once Prohibition of alcohol was finally enacted by a constitutional amendment, Edith Roosevelt, by then a former First Lady, resented government determination of what she considered a personal choice and defiantly served cocktails to guests at her home Sagamore Hill.

Nellie Taft had always enjoyed a full range of alcoholic beverages without any negative result, starting with drinking beer in the popular gathering halls near the breweries of her native Cincinnati.

Nellie Taft defied critics to serve her strong champagne punch to White House guests. (LC)

As First Lady, she willfully ignored the lobbying of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union beseeching her to refrain from serving any liquor in the nation’s house. Instead, she let it be known that she took especial pride in her champagne punch, a concoction with ingredients that included cointreau and other flavored alcoholic beverages.

When former President William Howard Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the United States, she quite openly violated the law by enjoying alcohol when she was able to find a home where it was served, despite her husband’s protests.

There is no evidence that either of the two wives of Woodrow Wilson the former Ellen Axson and Edith Bolling Galt favored Prohibition. For many previous decades the new national law had been strongly advocated by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union [WCTU], an organization with a massive membership.

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.

Although Edith Wilson was the incumbent First Lady at the time the 18th Amendment was passed, it was during this same period that the President was in a state of partial recovery from a devastating stroke. Her focus was entirely on efforts to keep the apparatus of the presidency functioning from his sickroom. The Wilsons did no entertaining at this time, save for a 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 still not uncommon for doctors at the time to prescribe a shot of whiskey as a stimulant in some instances, there is no indication of this as an ongoing treatment in the President’s medical record.

President Warren Harding and First Lady Florence Harding.

Edith Wilson long outlived her husband who died in 1924, three years after his presidency ended. Although Prohibition remained the law, the widowed Mrs. Wilson openly served alcohol to her guests at her private home in Washington. It is unclear whether her pronounced preference for the Virginia Gentleman brand of whiskey was due to its name conjuring up memories of her late husband, a native of that state, or the quality of the liquor.

Florence Harding upheld Prohibition as the law of the land while entertaining guests at the White House lawn parties, receptions and dinners.  When the President gathered with cronies to play poker in the privacy of his oval study, however, they drank scotch and other whiskey drinks taken from his private reserve and, so many suggested, from gifts of bottled alcohol that, perhaps unknown to him, had been confiscated by his Department of Justice enforcers.

Eleanor Roosevelt at a banquet. She served liquor to guests but did not drink herself. (carlanthonyonline)

During these gatherings, the First Lady was never seen drinking any alcohol herself but rather assumed the role of bartender, mixing whiskey drinks as orders were called out to her by the President, according to the wife of House Speaker Nicholas Longworth who was in attendance with her husband.

Both Grace Coolidge and Lou Hoover strictly adhered to the strictest interpretations of Prohibition, neither imbibing in private themselves nor serving any such beverages to White House guests.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who’s father had suffered from, and died of complications due to severe alcoholism, did not especially celebrate the overturning of Prohibition in the early months of her husband’s Administration. She generally did not partake of alcoholic beverages but permitted these being served to guests.

Bess Truman with a champagne bottle intended to christen a plane. (National Archives)

In contrast, Bess Truman was famous with the staff for enjoying an after-work cocktail with the President in the family quarters, insisting that there be no stinting on the bourbon in her favorite drink, an “old-fashioned.”

The next First Lady, Mamie Eisenhower, was plagued not by alcoholism but the false story that she did.

In the decade preceding her White House tenure, while separated from her husband during his World War II military leadership, she found herself limited to a small circle of other military wives, many of whom did drink heavily.

Mamie Eisenhower at a public banquet with Nelson Rockefeller and Bob Hope. (easy)

At one point of particular stress during the war, she may have drank too much for her brother-in-law Milton Eisenhower warned her that onlookers might draw assumptions about her from the company she kept.

Conscious of how anything she said or did could reflect poorly on her husband, she ensured that she did nothing that could lead others to this conclusion. Nevertheless, rumors persisted during her husband’s presidency, finally mitigated when it was disclosed that she suffered from alcoholism.

Jacqueline Kennedy in widow’s black at a spring 1964 memorial service for her late husband. (NBC Archival Footage)

In the darkest days and nights that followed her husband’s assassination and burial, Jacqueline Kennedy found she was able to numb some of her overwhelming grief by occasionally using alcohol. This is documented by the recorded sound of drinks being imbibed as she was being tape-recorded by historian Arthur Schlesinger for what proved to be her oral history recollections of her late husband. This audio record, made in early 1964, was publicly released in the autumn of 2011.

However, in his own recollections from 1996, Schlesinger recalled the somberness of the process and how Mrs. Kennedy had to rely on several highballs during at least one of their several recording sessions. Others close to the widow, both protective and sympathetic, would also share these recollections. After that period, there is no further evidence or record of the need for such beverages.

Pat Nixon listens to her husband deliver his resignation speech. (Fox News)

During the increasingly anxious weeks of the summer of 1974, as the Watergate scandal grew to the point where President Nixon was forced to resign, the First Lady maintained a grueling schedule of appearances at public events. Despite this, a book chronicling the period and published shortly thereafter printed that reliable sources claimed the First Lady had come to depend on alcohol to endure the severe depression and worry that would have understandably affected members of the presidential family. The former President, as well as many aides and others who saw and worked with Mrs. Nixon during this time completely denied the story as an outright fabrication.

Betty Ford at the recovery center which bore her name. (Betty Ford – Hazelden)

It was her immediate successor, Betty Ford, who helped to revolutionize what came to be known as the “recovery movement.” A year after she had left the White House, when the former First Lady entered a narcotic treatment program at Long Beach Naval Hospital, not far from her new home in Rancho Mirage, California, she also issued a simple statement stating that she had become addicted to both prescription pain medication and alcohol.

In her subsequent memoirs, Mrs. Ford stated that while she did not permit herself to become strongly reliant on either narcotic in the White House because she had enormous responsibility not only as First Lady but during the course of her husband’s 1976 re-election campaign.

As White House hostess, Rosalynn Carter had decided with the President to not serve hard liquor to guests, as an economic measure. (JCPL)

Subsequently, she co-founded a drug and alcohol recovery center near her home, in Palm Springs, California which bore her name.”The Betty Ford Center” became world famous as did her activism on the issues of alcoholism, particularly as it related to problems unique to women.

Rosalynn Carter created controversy not because she used alcohol but because she limited the range of drinks that would be served to guests.

Echoing the 19th century decisions of Sarah Polk and Lucy Hayes. She did this not as a morale decision, but rather as a cost-cutting matter. Beer, wine and champagne continued to be served to guests.

Still, she was soon after dubbed with the sobriquet of “Rose Rosalynn” with many columnists critical of her decision.

In more recent times, First Ladies living in an era have benefitted from both a more understanding societal perspective of both the deeper emotional reasons people might abuse alcohol and the physiological impact of overindulgence on alcoholic beverages.

Thus, as far as the public record and other anecdotal sources concur, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama

The portrait of Lucy Hayes presented to the White House by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (The White House Collection)

From the earliest days of the nineteenth century, the White House was the social center of the capital city. By and large, however, it was only members of the legislature and judiciary who relocated to Washington from their home states during the periods Congress was in session. This meant that the early First Ladies usually had guest lists that were largely male and for them, they made alcoholic beverages readily available.

Charles Adams. (Massachusetts Historial Society)

With alcoholism killing her brother and son Charles, Abigail Adams was especially sensitive the devastating effects of heavy drinking, “He was no man’s enemy,” she said of the latter, “but his own.”

Payne Todd. (wikipedia)

The aimless and ultimately wasted life of Dolley Madison’s son Payne Todd was also due to excessive drinking. Still, both women were able to draw a line between their personal dislike of heavy alcohol consumption and what they viewed as their duty as hostess in the president’s home.

One finds few examples of nineteenth century First Ladies being especially fond of liquor themselves or of serving it. One exception was the young Julia Tyler, who insisted on large quantities of champagne being made available to guests at her final grand ball, and of intoxicating eggnog for her one holiday season as First Lady, in 1844.

Julia Tyler. (findagrave)

Apart from liquor purchase receipts during the Tyler Administration, it was only by the praise of the religious press heaped upon her immediate successor, Sarah Polk, and the sharp contrast they drew between her and Mrs. Tyler that one discerns the latter’s tastes.

As a strict Methodist, Sarah Polk did not attend horse races or play cards because gambling was involved, and did not drink, smoke, or dance. Some of the perception about her as a severe person may be attributed to the credit that religious leaders were eager to pin on her, finding in the First Lady an important role model. In fact, some of her restrictions may have had more to do with her perceptions of the dignity of the presidency and less about her personal choices.

Sarah and James Polk. (wikipedia)

Mrs. Polk is known to have discouraged the Marine Band from playing lighthearted music because it encouraged dancing, which she considered it undignified for the White House. While she did maintain a strict policy of having no hard liquor served to guests, records indicate that she permitted a wide variety of wines to be served at formal dinners.

Jane Pierce has been cast similarly. Like Mrs. Polk, she was extremely orthodox in her personal life when it came to alcohol consumption, having pledged to her intolerantly strict father, while a young woman, that she would not drink. Yet she was not actively vehement against others doing so.

There were also more personal reasons for her refraining.

Jane Pierce. (NFLL)

Drinking would have only worsened her chronic depression, occasional pleurisy and tuberculosis. Also, there was the sensitive matter of President Pierce’s earlier addiction to heavy drinking, which would rise again at the end of his life. Still, she did not order that White House guests should be denied the chance to consume alcohol if they wished.

Among the many untrue charges leveled against Mary Lincoln was one claim that she became riotously drunk with the Russian Ambassador during a cruise on the presidential yacht. There was not even circumstantial evidence to suggest this was true, let alone any record of any such party on the vessel.

Like most of the tales told and printed about her during the acrimonious Civi War years this claim, printed in one anti-Lincoln newspaper, was almost certainly motivated by political opposition to her husband.

By the post-Civil War era, legitimate concerns about the laxity in American society and the resultant physical abuse of women caused by heavy drinking led to the formation of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The organization, consisting of regional divisions of women all in concert with efforts to eradicate alcohol consumption and, eventually, cigar and cigarette smoking and immodest clothing for women.

Mary Lincoln (LC)

The organization, like many others, looked to the First Lady as the leading example for women across the country and naturally made the women the focus of their lobbying efforts. With the overall prohibition movement becoming a powerful force in politics by the late 19th century, and First Ladies usually granted requests from the organization to be received at the White House.

Nevertheless, most First Ladies both served and drank alcoholic beverages, usually light wines with dinner, champagne or whiskey punch.

Julia Grant, for example, had an especially strong punch made of champagne, brandy and rum served at her White House receptions and larger events, with an array of fine wines served at dinners. She also enjoyed these.

While there was no public outcry about the First Lady drinking, she was always extremely sensitive about printed stories claiming that her husband had a weakness for alcohol and that its effects on him were visible and extreme. She would vehemently deny these stories, having her letters printed in newspapers that might have suggested this about her late husband.

Lucretia Garfield. (NFLL)

Lucretia Garfield was angered when a temperance leader called on her shortly after she entered the White House and implored her vigorously to continue the policy of Lucy Hayes. Mrs. Garfield reordered her frustration at what she considered an impertinent plea. She had liquor served at the White House to guests, ignoring the WCTU, even after the White House accepted the gift made by the organization of a larger-than-life portrait of Lucy Hayes which depicted a water fountain in its background.

Shortly after she began her tenure as First Lady, Ida McKinley entertained a large group of her and the President’s young adult relatives at a dinner and reception. When one of them spoke to the press and reported that the new First Lady had not permitted any alcoholic beverages to be served to them, the story made headlines.

William and Ida McKinley and two of her nieces at a dinner party hosted by their friend Mark Hanna and his wife. (Ohio Historical Society)

Soon enough, the WCTU was hailing Ida McKinley as one of their new heroines, predicting that she would usher in a new era of temperance. As time shortly proved, they were sorely mistaken. Mrs. McKinley permitted all types of liquor to be served in the White House to both her private guests and those invited to formal events. She herself enjoyed drinking no more than a regular glass of claret or red wine, but she resisted the efforts of friends who were temperance advocates from initiating a “dry” policy.

The only two First Ladies known to have been “teetotalers” were Lucy Hayes and Frances Cleveland, but neither formally allied themselves with the WCTU, likely out of fear that such a commitment might alienate their husbands’ political supporters.

In the case of Lucy Hayes, the President involved himself in negotiating the situation. Having been elected, in part, with support from the Prohibition Party, Rutherford Hayes was sensitive to the growing temperance movement. Since she had come of age, Mrs. Hayes had never drank any liquor, a commitment she made seriously but privately.

Rutherford and Lucy Hayes. (LC)

Once installed in the White House, she had no notion of enacting a ban. However, following the drunkenness of a Russian prince who was being entertained at a formal dinner, the President instructed the staff that instead of real rum being used in dessert at the next dinner function that rum flavoring be substituted. Otherwise no alcoholic beverages were made available and one quip at the time cracked that at the Hayes White House, “water flowed like wine.”

Still, the WCTU saw a heroine in Mrs. Hayes, as the titular head of the national household, and had albums containing signatures and remarks, heaping praise on the First Lady for what they assumed was her policy.

Despite the flattery, the First Lady refused to even honorarily accept membership in the organization. Yet she was the one who would be lampooned in verse and cartoon as “Lemonade Lucy.”

A cartoon showing a smiling Lucy Hayes in a water decanter and a frowning one in a wine bottle.(Hayes Center)

Like Jane Pierce and Lucy Hayes, Frances Cleveland had made a family pledge as a young girl to never drink alcohol. She never sought to influence her husband, known for his love of beer, to follow her lead, nor did she determine to restrict alcohol from being served at the White House.

For herself, when a waiter would come to her place at the dinner table, she simply kept her wine glasses turned upside down. Instead, she had an especial predilection for a popular mineral water of the era, Apollonairis.

If the WCTU believed they finally had an inherent in the White House, they were disappointed by Frances Cleveland on another account.

Frances Folsom Cleveland. (LC)

At one of their annual conventions, they issued a proclamation calling on the youthful First Lady to set a moral example for the nation’s young women who looked up to her as a role model in everything from her posture to her hairstyle.

At her first public appearance, at a formal evening function after the organization had issued its demand of her, the First Lady made clear her reaction to the group attempting to dictate what she wore.

As she descended to the White House state floor, Mrs. Cleveland was wearing a low-cut and sleeveless gown.

Frances Cleveland Preston and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the only two presidential widows who remarried, shown shortly before their deaths in 1948 and 1994, respectively. (NFLL, Pinterest)

(This blog article is adapted from a written response to a member of the public who inquired about where the two First Ladies who, as widows, later married a second husband, are buried and under what names)

Frances Folsom Cleveland. (LC)

There were five women who were married to Presidents of the United States, either before, during or after their tenure, who had previously been widowed (Martha Washington, Martha Jefferson, Dolley Madison, Caroline Fillmore , Mary Harrison, Edith Wilson) and three who had been divorced (Jackson, Harding, Ford).

The vast majority of women married to Presidents survived them. Of these, only two presidential widows married a second time.

Former President and First Lady Cleveland with their children on the porch of their Princeton, New Jersey home. (NFLL)

Born on July 21, 1864, Frances Folsom famously married at the age of 21 years old to the incumbent President of United States, Grover Cleveland, in the White House on June 2, 1886. He was 28 years her senior.

The former President died on June 24, 1908 in the town of Princeton, New Jersey where he and his family lived after his presidency.

Mrs. Cleveland remarried on February 10, 1913 to a Princeton University professor of archeology, Thomas Jex Preston, Jr.

Frances Preston’s free frank. (ebay)

Born on October 26, 1862 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, he was two years older than the former First Lady, who had also been born in the state of New York.

Frances Cleveland Preston. (Buffalo Architecture and History)

Although she was had remarried, Mrs. Preston was permitted to continue using the free frank privilege, which enabled her to send mail free of charge by signing her signature where a stamp is usually placed.

She always signed with both of her married names, usually as “Frances F. Cleveland Preston,” and occasionally even as “Frances F.C. Preston.”

She died in 1948. Her second husband survived her by seven years.

Frances Cleveland Preston’s burial place. (findagrace.com)

Frances Preston chose to be buried in the same Princeton cemetery where her first husband and daughter Ruth had been laid to rest as well.

Her gravestone carries both of her married names.

President Cleveland’s grave. (findagrave.com)

It also states the names of her parents but does not mention the names of either of her husbands. The burial place of Thomas J. Preston is indeterminable.

Jacqueline Bouvier married John F. Kennedy, the incumbent United States Senator representing the state of Massachusetts on September 12, 1953.

Born on July 28, 1929, she was then 24 years old. Her husband, born in 1917, was twelve years her senior.

Four years after his death, Mrs. Kennedy lays flowers on her first husband’s resting place. (JFKL)

The Kennedys were married for just over ten years.

In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated as President of the United States. Against the wishes of some of his family members, she determined that he would be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a prominent spot that overlooked the capital city of Washington.

Jacqueline Kennedy moments after her wedding to Aristotle Onassis. (grreport.info)

Five years later,  the widowed Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married a second time, on October 20, 1968 in a Greek Orthodox chapel on Skorpios, Greece, the private island owned by her second husband, Aristotle Onassis.

Aristotle Onassis died on March 15, 1975.

His widow, who always used his name for the rest of her life, signing her name as “Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” or just “Jacqueline Onassis,” survived him by nineteen years, dying on May 19, 1994.

The gravestone of Mrs. Onassis. (flicker)

She is buried beside her first husband in his presidential burial plot, at Arlington National Cemetery.

Her gravestone carries her name as “Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis,” with her second husband’s last name being engraved on a separate, second line.

One other former First Lady is buried in Arlington National Cemetery: Helen “Nellie” Taft, who died in 1943 lays beneath the same obelisk memorial marking the resting place of her husband, former President and former Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who died in 1930.

Pat Nixon speaking at a national park. (National Archives)

This article is an adaption of a response to a public inquiry asking for the origins of First Lady Pat Nixon’s public declaration of support for both the Equal Rights Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

First Lady Pat Nixon, in blue, bidding farewell to Second Lady Betty Ford, in the blue Red Cross uniform, 1974. (National Archives)

Although it is her successor and friend Betty Ford who is the First Lady most closely associated with several women’s issues that dominated the national dialogue in the 1970s, Pat Nixon was the first to express her views. She did so not out of a motivation to weigh in on the issues, but in response to questions posed to her at a 1972 press conference, whereas Betty Ford became an outspoken activist on behalf of gender equality issues.

Mrs. Nixon’s support of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was part of the platform of the 1968 National Republican Convention, as well as her support of what would be the Supreme Court’s final decision on Roe v. Wade emerged from a press conference in the summer of 1972, as she was campaigning on her own on behalf of the President’s re-election campaign.

In mid-September of 1972, the First Lady made a one-week campaign tour on her own, starting in Chicago.

On the afternoon of September 19, 1972, following a stop at a ceremony where immigrants were undergoing their naturalization ceremony, and accompanied by Illinois Governor Richard Ogilivie, she held an informal press conference.

Mrs. Nixon holding a press conference with college students in 1971. (Nixon Presidential Library)

In her meeting with reporters, they asked her a series of politically sensitive questions, including amnesty for those who had left the U.S. to avoid being drafted to the war in Vietnam, the pending Supreme Court case on abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, the growing Watergate scandal, and the claims that the Attorney General’s wife, Martha Mitchell, had been held against her will by FBI agents.

During that conference, she affirmed her support of the ERA and belief that abortion should be a legally considered a “personal matter” (although a final decision on Roe v. Wade was not delivered by the Supreme Court until January 22, 1973, arguments had begun on December 13, 1971, and the issue was one of widespread public discourse all through 1972).

Apart from Mrs. Nixon’s responses to reporters that September day in 1972, she apparently gave the matter no further consideration in public.

Pat Nixon meeting with women workers. (historical images.com)

There is a subtle but important distinction, however, that Mrs. Nixon made on the issue of abortion. While she supported an individual’s right to make this choice, she did not support what she called “wholesale abortion on demand,” thus suggesting she anticipated a moderated pro-choice Republican view that emerged in the early 1990s.

On the ERA, Mrs. Nixon seems to have had a rather vigorous perspective, having been a working woman for a full sixteen years of her life, ending only with the birth of her first child Tricia.

As Julie Nixon Eisenhower wrote of her mother “In 1972 she urged that the [equal rights] amendment be endorsed again at the convention” as it had been by the 1968 Republican National Convention platform which nominated her husband for his first term.

The Nixons at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the First Lady first announced to reporters that she wanted a woman on the Supreme Court. (pinterest.com)

Julie states further that “my father raised objections,” a lukewarm response. The National Republican Party did again endorse the ERA in 1976, especially since then First Lady at the time, Betty Ford, was an outspoken activist on behalf of its potential passage.

There was only one other political issue on which the President and Mrs. Nixon were known to have had conflicting views, and that was the appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court. Contrary to her usual policy of refraining from weighing in on contentious issues.

The First Lady publicly declared her intention to lobby the President hard on appointing a woman while exiting a performance with him at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In private, she vigorously implored him to do so and when he instead appointed a man, there were some frosty moments, according to her biographer and daughter.

Despite her telling ABC television reporter Virginia Sherwood that the bi-partisan Women’s National Political Caucus, formed in February 1971 that it sounded “out there,” she strongly supported its agenda of involving more women in politics, including elective office.

Pat Nixon arrives in Michigan to campaign for Lenore Romney (behind her), a candidate for the U.S Senate. (original source unknown)

It’s original co-chairman of national policy council was, in fact,   Republican Virginia Allen, former chair of President Nixon’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities.

While learning, during a tour of Rumania’s legislature, that it had a large percentage of women representatives, the First Lady made a startling observation that American women were under-represented in the U.S. Congress.

Although it was initiated as a political payback for the loyalty of Michigan Governor George Romney to her husband, Pat Nixon made a highly publicized campaign tour on behalf of his wife, Lenore Romney, in her failed campaign for the U.S. Senate seat from Michigan.

Lee Bouvier Radziwll, during the years when her sister Jacqueline Kennedy was First Lady. (ebay)

This article is adapted from a response to a public inquiry about the  sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill during the 1960 presidential election.

Born as Caroline Lee Bouvier on March 3, 1933 but always known by her middle name, Lee Radziwill currently lives between apartments in New York and Paris, France.

She has worked at various times as a fashion publicist, an interior designer and an actress.

Lee Radziwill has survived many family losses. Her famous sister, the former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis died in 1994.  Five years later, she lost both her nephew John F. Kennedy, Jr. and her son Anthony, one of the two children she had.

Her most recent husband was the film producer Herbert Ross, who died in 2001, a year after they divorced. She obtained a Catholic annulment from her first husband Michael Canfield in 1959, and then married Stanislaw Radziwill.

Although born in the Ukraine, Radziwill was the descendant of Polish nobility; during World War II, he became a refugee to England.

Lee Bouvier Radziwill, popularly known as “Princess Radziwill” during the time her sister was First Lady. (ebay)

Denied permission from the Queen of England the right to use his inherited title of “Prince,” he was permitted the informal use of it as a courtesy.

Since the American First Lady’s sister was often addressed as “Princess Radziwill,” it was often incorrectly assumed that she was a legitimate member of a European royal family. They divorced in 1974 and he died two years later.

Four years younger than Jackie, her only sister, the two siblings were constant companions and great confidantes in their early years.

Although Lee Radziwill relocated to England after her marriage to “Stas,” as he was known by family and friends, she was often in the United States visiting her sister in the 1950s, as the political career of her brother-in-law, Senator John F. Kennedy rose until he attained the presidency in 1960.

While unable to attend the January 1961 inauguration, Lee Radziwill made many long visits to the White House, marked by a stay at the presidential weekend home in Middleburg, Virginia and was once the guest of honor at a private dance hosted by Mrs. Kennedy.

Radzwill joins her sister and brother-in-law for church one Sunday in Virginia.

With a wide circle of friends among international society, she knew many in the diplomatic set who figured, to some degree, in the Washington world of her sister. Privately, she also managed to purchase French-made clothing for the First Lady, technically enabling her to maintain a vow that she only purchased items made in the United States.

Although she did not play any technically official role in the Kennedy Administration, her presence was notable.

Lee Radziwill first came to wide public notice during the May-June 1961 state visit by the President and Mrs. Kennedy to Paris, Vienna and London.

While in London, the President and First Lady were guests at the Radziwill home and JFK served as godfather for his niece Christina, born in 1960 (who now lives in New York).

The Bouvier sisters on a Pakistani camel and Indian elephant. (Magnum)

After the President returned to Washington from London, the Bouvier sisters then made their own trip, a private vacation to Greece in mid-June of 1961.

It was, however, the March-April 1962 trip to India and Pakistan of the First Lady Jackie Kennedy with Lee Radziwill as her official companion, that made the sister a globally recognizable figure.

Dressed similarly and with a remarkable resemblance to each other, they were seen in press photographs riding an elephant and then a camel together and in an NBC color documentary made for television audiences.

As part of the presidential entourage to Ireland, Radziwill greets an Irish government official, as Eunice Kennedy Shriver looks on.

Her most prominent public visibility, however, came as part of the official presidential party of a trip to Ireland in June of 1963, joining President Kennedy.

Since the First Lady was then pregnant and unable to travel, Lee Radziwill acted as an informal companion to him, along with the presence of two of his three sisters, Jean Kennedy Smith and Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

The visit to Ireland was more than a state visit, however, it was a sentimental return to the land of ancestors for both the President and Mrs. Radziwill, which her maternal great-great grandparents had immigrated to America.

Lee Radziwill and Onassis,, February 1963.

Following the death of Jacqueline Kennedy’s infant son Patrick in August of 1963, and her ensuring depression, Lee Radziwill arranged for them to make another European vacation, this time as guests on the yacht of her friend Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate for a cruise of the Aegean Ocean and stops at ancient Greek sites, and tours of Turkey and Morocco.

Although the President and Mrs. Kennedy had once briefly met Onassis in the late 1950s in the south of France, Lee Radziwill’s more familiar friendship with him bridged what would become his later closeness to the First Lady.

Radziwill (right) with her sister, three months after the president’s assassination.

Following her attendance at President Kennedy’s funeral in November of 1963, Lee Radziwill was a strong emotional support on whom her sister relied as she moved to a temporary home in Washington as a widow.

Lee Radziwlll and Jackie Kennedy at the RFK funeral. (pinterest)

During the first summer of her widowhood, Jackie Kennedy again had her sister as traveling companion during a cruise on the Adriatic Ocean, with a visit to Yugoslavia.

Although they kept a home in England, she and her family relocated to New York and lived within walking distance of her sister. Lee Radziwill was at her sister’s side during the June 1968 funeral and burial of Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the late president, and her October 1968 remarriage to Aristotle Onassis.

Radziwll and Nureyev.

While living in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s, she befriended many of the leading names in the arts and pop culture at the time, including artist Andy Warhol, Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, author Truman Capote, and dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

Lee Radziwill out on the town in the autumn of 2015. (ellecanada.com)

Later, as single women in New York, the two sisters pursued diverging professional pursuits, but came together to publish their original drawings and account of a European trip they made together in the summer of 1951, One Special Summer.

Mrs. Onassis hosted the wedding party in her Fifth Avenue apartment for her sister’s third marriage, in 1988.

Turning 83 years old on her next birthday, Mrs. Radziwill still maintains an active social life in Paris and New York. In 2013, she granted a taped interview with the New York Times.

She has also continued her link to the late president’s family, a notable attendee at the 2009 funeral of his brother, the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy.

(All images used in this article were found on ebay and do not note the original source.)