Ranking the First Ladies: True Tales and Trivia, from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama

By Ian Randal Strock

Have you ever wondered about the lives of the Presidential wives? Much attention has been focused on the Presidents, often ignoring the women who accompany them to the White House. Now it’s time we turn the spotlight on the First Ladies, whose lives give fascinating insight into the history of our country.

In this trivia lover’s paradise, no stone is left unturned. You will learn which First Ladies lived the longest, which were the best educated, which had the most children, and which were on the other end of the spectrum. You will also discover which women married their way into the White House, which causes and projects the First Ladies pursued, and so much more. Other family members, including Presidential children, are also described by the numbers; there is even a section on Presidential pets. Brimming with lists, anecdotes, and more, Ranking the First Ladies is a treasure trove for history lovers of all stripes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carrel Books
• Release date: Jul 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781631440601

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Copyright © 2016 by Ian Randal Strock

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Print ISBN: 978-1-63144-058-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63144-060-1

Printed in the United States of America

For Mom.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The First Ladies

Note on Usage

General Information about the Presidents

General Information about the First Ladies

THE AVERAGE FIRST LADY

THE FIRST LADIES: LIFE AND DEATH

1. The Five First Ladies Who Lived the Longest

2. The Five First Ladies Who Died the Youngest

3. The First Ladies Who Lived the Longest after Leaving the White House

4. The First Ladies Who Died the Soonest after Leaving the White House

5. The Most Common Names of First Ladies

6. The Most Popular States for First Ladies to Be Born

6a. The First Ladies Born Outside the Original 13 Colonies

6b. The Foreign-Born First Lady

7. The Most Popular States for First Ladies to Be Buried

8. The First and Last First Ladies to Be Born in the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s

9. The First and Last First Ladies to Die in the 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s

10. First Ladies Who Shared Birthdays

11. First Ladies Who Shared Deathdays

12. The First Ladies Who Outlived the Greatest Number of Their Successors

13. The First Ladies Who Were Older Than the Greatest Number of Their Predecessors

14. The First Ladies with the Fewest Living Predecessors

15. The First Ladies with the Most Living Predecessors

16. The Times There Were the Greatest Number of Living Current and Former First Ladies

17. During Which Year Were the Greatest Number of First Ladies Born?

18. During Which Year Did the Greatest Number of First Ladies Die?

19. During Which President’s Term of Office Were the Greatest Number of First Ladies Born?

20. During Which President’s Term of Office Did the Greatest Number of First Ladies Die?

21. The Longest Periods of Time during Which No First Ladies Died

THE FIRST LADIES: ON THE JOB

22. First (and Second) Ladies Who Were College Graduates

23. The Only First Lady to Hold Elective Office in Her Own Right

24. The Five Oldest First Ladies

25. The Five Youngest First Ladies

26. The First Ladies Who Were the Greatest Number of Years Older Than Their Predecessors

27. The First Ladies Who Were the Greatest Number of Years Younger Than Their Predecessors

28. The First Ladies Who Served the Longest Terms

29. The First Ladies Who Served the Shortest Terms

30. Official White House Hostesses

31. First Ladies’ Causes and Projects

THE FIRST LADIES: HOME AND FAMILY

32. The First Ladies Who Had the Most Children

33. The First Ladies Who Had the Fewest Children

34. The Five First Ladies Who Outlived Their Husbands by the Longest Time

35. The Five First Ladies Who Predeceased Their Husbands by the Longest Time

36. The Most Married First Ladies (Those Who Were Married More Than Once)

37. The Women Who Married Presidents to Become First Lady

38. The Five Longest Presidential Marriages

39. The Five Briefest Presidential Marriages

40. The First Ladies Who Died While Their Husbands Were President

41. The Presidential Wives Who Missed Their Husbands’ Presidencies

42. The First Ladies Whose Parents Lived to See Them Become First Ladies

43. The First Ladies Who Were Related to Each Other

44. The First Ladies Who Were Related to Presidents (Other Than Their Husbands)

45. Eisenhower and Nixon, the Only Marriage Uniting Two Presidential Families

46. The First Ladies Who Had All Their Children Live to See Them Become First Ladies

47. The First Ladies Who Had All Their Siblings Live to See Them Become First Ladies

48. The First Ladies Who Gave Birth to Children after Leaving Office

49. The First Ladies Who Were

49a. Firstborn Children

49b. Lastborn Children

49c. Only Children

49d. Not Quites

49e. Unknowns

50. First Ladies’ Fathers’ Occupations

OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS

51. The Senior Presidential Child

52. The Longest-Lived Presidential Children

53. White House Weddings

54. Non-White House Weddings of Presidential Children

55. The Roosevelts: the Most-Married Presidential Children

56. Presidential Pets

SUMMATIONS

57. The Most Common First Ladies (Those Appearing in the Fewest Lists in this Book)

58. The Most Uncommon First Ladies (Those Appearing in the Most Lists in this Book)

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

When I was little, my mother hung a poster in the house, showing the Presidents’ faces, names, and dates of office. I memorized it.

Soon after that, President Nixon announced his resignation, and my first political memory is asking my parents if that meant that Henry Kissinger would be President, since his was the only other name I knew. My parents explained to me about the Vice Presidency and that Gerald Ford was the new President.

Then I learned more about the Presidents—who they were, what they did, how they came to be President—and I developed more and more of an interest in them. I began looking for commonalities, connections between the men who’d been President, patterns and signs. What characteristics did they share? What facets of their lives pointed toward their eventual elections? Could I calculate all the numbers to predict who would become the next President? Could I use the information I gathered to earn that post myself?

As it turns out, the answers are equivocal. Using those numbers, I was able to predict Barack Obama’s election over John McCain and then his reelection over Mitt Romney. But I did not share those commonalities the Presidents seemed to have, so my odds of getting there are very long indeed.

While I was turning this lifelong interest in the Presidents into my first book (The Presidential Book of Lists, which Random House/Villard published before the election of 2008), I was also looking at those closest to them: spouses, children, parents, and more. And just as I was fascinated by the Presidents, individually and collectively, their relatives proved to be no less interesting, especially their First Ladies. While they do not fit into the same patterns as easily as the Presidents, they are a varied, accomplished, and interesting lot.

Thus, I am pleased to present this book. Originally conceived as a companion to my first, it has grown into a stand-alone volume. I hope you’ll enjoy learning more about the First Ladies, as I did in preparing this book.

The First Ladies

In the early days of the United States of America, the concept of a popularly elected President who would willingly step down from office after a set period of time was remarkable, nearly unprecedented. And when the government was set up, the President’s spouse was not really considered, and there was no formal legislation surrounding her. Neither was there a generally accepted term. Though the President was called the President or Mr. President, his wife would be known howsoever she requested. Martha Washington was usually called Lady Washington or Mrs. President, and sometimes the term Presidentress was used.

According to legend, President Zachary Taylor was the first to use the term First Lady, when he was eulogizing former First Lady Dolley Madison in 1849. Unfortunately, no record of his eulogy exists.

President James Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Lane, who was his official hostess, was the first woman to be called First Lady while actually serving in that position. The phrase appeared in print in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly in 1860, when he wrote, The Lady of the White House, and by courtesy, the First Lady of the Land. As late as the second decade of the 1900s, other terms were used, including Edith Wilson’s preferred Mrs. Presidentress.

Today, the title First Lady of the United States is recognized as the official White House hostess. The last time there was no Presidential wife to fulfill that role was 1914–15, after Ellen Wilson died and before Woodrow Wilson married Edith Galt. Since then, every President’s wife has been active in the role, so it has come to be synonymous with the President’s wife.

The position of the First Lady is not elected, and it has no official duties and no salary. Nevertheless, it has evolved into a post of significant influence. Most First Ladies champion charitable causes and serve as role models. The first First Ladies, Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, came to prominence during the Revolutionary War, and while their husbands were President, they were treated as if they were ladies of the British royal court, elevated supporters of the sovereign. Dolley Madison popularized the role and was cognizant of her position as a role model. She set a standard for many of her successors.

After more than a century of First Ladies confining themselves to the social and supportive aspects of life, Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith, broke out of those constraints and greatly (if secretly) expanded the role of First Lady. She is generally assumed to have been acting President for six months following his stroke in 1919. This position was not Constitutional: Vice President Marshall was kept from seeing the President or knowing the full extent of his incapacity. If Marshall had visited the ailing President, it is probable he would have moved to be acting President himself or possibly sought Wilson’s removal from the Presidency. But history records that he did not, and Edith always claimed that Woodrow made all the decisions and signed all the papers, which she brought him in private.

It wasn’t until Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s that the First Lady took on more executive responsibilities. Franklin was wheelchair-bound and thus unable to travel easily. Eleanor took on a lot of travel for her President-husband, performing inspections and meeting the people in places Franklin could not easily go, being seen in public, and coincidentally assuming a position of power herself. Eleanor also recognized her public persona, and in addition to the duties she carried out for the President, she wrote her own syndicated newspaper column and hosted a radio show. After Franklin’s death, President Truman officially recognized her importance to the country by appointing her US Delegate to the United Nations.

Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to have a formal job in her husband’s Administration, managing its efforts to reform healthcare from her precedent-setting office in the West Wing of the White House.

The Office of the First Lady of the United States handles her hostessing, social, and ceremonial duties. The Office now has a paid staff and is part of the Executive Office of the President, but it wasn’t always so.

Caroline Harrison’s niece Mary Scott Lord Dimmick (who later married Caroline’s widowed husband) may have been the first staff member for a First Lady. Mary served as Caroline’s social secretary. Florence Harding had a funded staff, including a social secretary and an assistant. Eleanor Roosevelt had a staff of only two. At first, they worked out of a second-floor office in the Executive Mansion, but later initiated the use of a First Lady’s office in the newly constructed East Wing. Jacqueline Kennedy expanded the First Lady’s staff to 40 people, directed by the social secretary. The current Office of the First Lady includes a Chief of Staff, Senior Advisor, Director of Communications, Press Secretary, Director of Strategic Planning, and Director of Special Projects, as well as assistants and more.

Rosalynn Carter sat in on Cabinet meetings, focused on substantive policy issues, and her husband cited her as an equal partner, calling her a perfect extension of myself. In 1979, Time magazine called her the second most powerful person in the United States. Under Rosalynn Carter, the office was, for the first time, formally called Office of the First Lady. Her principal assistant, Mary Finch Hoyt, was the first to be called Chief of Staff to the First Lady. A 1978 law finally authorized government funding for the First Lady’s staff and office, though curiously, the First Lady herself is still an unfunded and undefined position.

Note on Usage

The term First Lady didn’t come into widespread use until the late 1800s, and even into the early 1900s, its use was not universal. While it’s generally used today to mean the President’s wife, in point of fact, the government recognizes the term as referring to whoever serves as the official White House hostess. In this book, however, I’ve slightly modified the definition for simplicity’s sake: in these pages, First Lady means any woman who was married to a President before, during, or after his term of office. I’ve also back dated the usage to the beginning of the republic, so that Martha Washington is the first First Lady. And Martha Jefferson, though she died 18 years before her husband was elected President, was also a First Lady.

Several Presidents served without a living spouse or with a spouse who was unwilling to take on White House hostessing duties (such as Jane Pierce, whose melancholia kept her secluded for almost two years, or Ida McKinley, whose illness kept her from most hostessing duties, which instead fell to Second Lady Jennie Hobart). In those cases, there were usually official White House hostesses, but only one, James Buchanan’s niece Harriet Lane, is usually included on the list of First Ladies. But because in this book First Ladies are the women who married Presidents, see Chapter 30 for a discussion of the other official White House hostesses.

In researching this book and its predecessor—The Presidential Book of Lists: From Most to Least, Elected to Rejected, Worst to Cursed—Fascinating Facts About Our Chief Executives, which focuses on the Presidents—I discovered that there are several methods of determining how closely two people are related. I’ve decided to use the method advocated by the National Genealogical Society, which seems the most common. In this system, to determine what degree of cousins two people are, count generations back to the common ancestor from each of the two people being compared. Using the person most closely related to the common ancestor, the degree of cousinhood (first, second, etc.) is one less than the number of generations between them. The degree of removedness (once removed, twice removed, etc.) is the number of generations difference between the two people being compared.