Eliabeth Monroe was an American first lady and wife of James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. Elizabeth and James spent much of their early married life abroad, where James served as the U. After her Betty Ford was an American first lady and the wife of Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States.
Ford realized the power of her position as first lady early on, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after her husband took office. Hannah Van Buren died 18 years before her husband Martin was elected president and never served as first lady. Edith Roosevelt was an American first lady and the second wife of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. Childhood sweehearts, the two were separated for a number of years before resuming their romance and marrying, two years after the Jane Pierce was an American first lady and the wife of Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States.
Although Franklin Pierce was candid about his political ambitions and was already a rising member of Congress when they married, Jane intensely Florence Harding was an American first lady and the wife of Warren G. Harding, 29th president of the United States. Florence Mabel Kling had In John Payne took his family back to his home colony of Virginia, and in he moved them to Philadelphia, city of the Quakers.
Dolley grew up in the strict discipline, but nothing muted her happy personality and her warm heart. Dolley married a lawyer named John Todd Jr. Just three years later John and his young son died in a yellow fever epidemic, leaving his wife with a small son. By this time Philadelphia had become the capital city. With her charm and her laughing blue eyes, fair skin, and black curls, the young widow attracted distinguished attention. Although Representative James Madison of Virginia was 17 years her senior and Episcopalian, they were married on September 15, The marriage, though childless, was notably happy.
Discarding the somber Quaker dress after her second marriage, Dolley chose the finest of fashions. It would be absolutely impossible for any one to behave with more perfect propriety than she did. She assisted at the White House when the president asked her help in receiving guests, and presided at the first inaugural ball in Washington when her husband became president in Her political acumen, prized by her husband, is less renowned, though her gracious tact smoothed many a quarrel.
Through her garb she signaled that the presidential mansion was not a court but the residence of an American executive.
Dolley Madison took charge of decorating the White House. Whereas Jefferson had brought his own furniture from home as part of his radical simplicity, Madison hired the architect and decorator Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and his wife Mary Elizabeth Hazlehurst Latrobe, to design and oversee the purchase of new interior furnishings.
She brought in newly designed Greek- and Roman-styled furniture. Her drawing room was upholstered in yellow with matching damask curtains. A Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Jonathan Roberts, worried that the party would be too fancy, but reported that he could still wear the leather boots of a countryman, and so he went to the White House parties.
Madison remains an icon for the perfect hostess, but she is best remembered for her conduct and actions during the War of Foreign affairs dominated the administration from the day James Madison took office. The fundamental problem was how to preserve American neutrality during the Napoleonic Wars. Conflicts between the political parties had stirred Washington society since Madison took office. After the declaration of war it became worse, and Dolley Madison doubled her efforts to be gracious and charming enough to disarm even her enemies.
Her drawing-room parties became increasingly charged with partisan debate, and eventually the rancor of war could not be kept out. But she remained publicly calm, no matter how inwardly enraged she felt. It was at that time that she began a letter to her sister Lucy in which she wrote of her preparations.
According to this letter Dolley Madison was still waiting at the mansion the next day, but by the afternoon the British had come too close to be ignored. She ordered a wagon to be packed with official papers, silver, and valuables and sent it to the Bank of Maryland. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. The Madison slave Paul Jennings has also described this famous event.
A day later Madison met up with her husband and they returned together to the city. The British had torched the White House and the Madisons were without a home. But ensconced in temporary housing Dolley Madison continued to entertain with energy and style. She furnished her new home on Nineteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue with secondhand furniture and persevered, the mistress of the nation who had braved the enemy. It was a beautiful and gracious house that had steadily been improved upon over the past sixteen years and was filled with paintings, portraits, busts, and a library of more than 4, volumes.
The estate was a cluster of four farms, with a village of slave cabins on each farm. Tobacco and wheat were the cash crops; corn and pork were the stapes of diet. Their slaves numbered more than James Madison never returned to Washington, and only once did he leave his estate: to participate in the Virginia constitutional convention of But if the Madisons stayed in place, visitors flocked to them.
Anna Payne Cutts and her children clustered there. Lucy Payne Washington Todd by twice married and widowed frequently stayed. And visitors of all sorts filled the home. But they suffered, like most Virginia farmers, when tobacco prices and exports declined in the s and s.
The cost of their gracious lifestyle and constant generosity began to take its toll. Dolley had been married to him for forty-two years. With him, she had found economic security and a public role to play. She had discovered great talents within herself, and she had been a faithful, supportive, and loving companion. Henceforth she was a widow. She described her mind as confused and depressed. But her brother, John Coles Payne, left as soon as he could, traveling first to Illinois and subsequently to Kentucky, taking with him the rest of his family and any support he might have provided.
James Madison knew that the value of his estate had greatly dwindled and that the land itself would not convey enough to fulfill his obligations and comfort his widow. In , she returned permanently to Washington,D. Her near-poverty was alleviated only when Congress agreed to purchase part of her husband's papers.
She was also awarded an honorary seat in Congress, permitting her to watch congressional debates from the floor, where members sat at their desks. She was, in addition, the first private citizen to transmit a message via telegraph, an honor given her by its inventor Samuel F. Even as a former First Lady, Dolley Madison continued to influence the evolving public role played by a presidential wife or official hostess. Tyler, her daughter-in-law Priscilla Cooper Tyler, all drew upon Mrs.
Madison's advice on how to conduct their public role. Her last public appearance was on the arm of President James K. Polk at his last White House reception.
She maintained a close personal friendship with former First Lady Louisa Adams, also then living in Washington. As one who knew personally figures like Washington and Jefferson, Dolley Madison became a symbol of the Founding Era as the nation moved into the antebellum period. She would often be called on to recollect the lives of the founders and her personal collection of portraits, autograph letters and other associated objects became something of a private museum. She was also nevertheless insistent on having her own role during the War of remembered.
Only in the latter 20th century would questions be raised about the validity of her specific account of how the Washington portrait was saved. The original letter in which she claimed to write her sister a detailed telling of her patriotic acts as they were unfolding in was somehow lost. It was her effort to reconstruct her alleged recollections some three decades later after the fact which remains the primary basis for the claim. Death: Her home, Washington ,D.
No record of his eulogy is extant. Please do not plagiarize. If you use a direct quote from our website please cite your reference and provide a link back to the source. By Second Marriage: None Occupation after Marriage: Although she assumed the traditional role of wife and housekeeper following her first marriage, Dolley Todd also had the assistance of her younger sister Anna, who lived with her and there is suggestion that she was of help to John Todd in his legal work.
First Lady: , March 4 - , March 3 40 years old With more conscious effort than either of her two predecessors, and with an enthusiasm for public life that neither of them had, Dolley Madison forged the highly public role as a President's wife, believing that the citizenry was her constituency as well as that of her husband's.
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