Eleanor Roosevelt was more than just the 32nd First Lady of the United States. She was a force of nature. From her hard childhood to the unconventional nature of her relationship with her husband...
Category - America’s First Ladies
Lou Henry Hoover: America’s First Ladies, #31
Lou Henry Hoover was the 31st First Lady of the United States. The wife of Herbert Hoover, she was First Lady when the Great Depression began. She was athletic and confident, and introduced some...
Grace Goodhue Coolidge: America’s First Ladies, #30
Grace Goodhue Coolidge was our 30th First Lady. Wife to US President Calvin Coolidge, she was known for her vivacious, outgoing personality, and for her simple, dignified White House dinners and...
Florence Kling Harding: America’s First Ladies, #29
Florence Kling Harding was a formidable First Lady. The first to be divorced before her marriage to a future president, Florence was the driving force behind much of her husband’s life during their...
Helen Herron Taft: America’s First Ladies, #27
Helen Herron Taft was the First Lady of many firsts. As the wife of twenty-seventh US President William Howard Taft, Helen was born into a family with political connections. As First Lady, she shone...
Ellen Axson Wilson and Edith Bolling Wilson: America’s First Ladies, #28
Woodrow Wilson, our twenty-eighth US President, had two First Ladies. His first, Ellen Axson, died his second year in office. He re-married to Edith Bolling near the end of his third year in office...
Edith Carow Roosevelt: America’s First Ladies, #26
Edith Carow was the second wife and First Lady of Theodore Roosevelt. She was a pioneering First Lady in many ways, and strong-willed. Her influence over Theodore was well-known. Here is her...
Frances Folsom Cleveland and Ida Saxton McKinley: America’s First Ladies, #24 and 25
Ida Saxton McKinley was the 25th First Lady of the United States. With a promising beginning, she ended up having a tragic life after her marriage to William McKinley. Her husband devoted himself to...
Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison: America’s First Ladies, #23
Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison was the 23rd First Lady of the United States and a hard-working one at that. Though her health was never robust during her marriage, she took on many duties to make...
Frances Folsom Cleveland: America’s First Ladies, #22
Frances Folsom Cleveland was a First Lady in a very literal sense of the word. She accomplished many firsts for First Ladies while she was one, and after. Here is the interesting story of the...
Mary Arthur McElroy: America’s First Ladies, #21
Chester A. Arthur was the 21st president of the United States, but his wife died a year before he became president. Instead, he asked his sister, Mary Arthur McElroy to take on First Lady duties...
Lucretia Rudolph Garfield: America’s First Ladies #20
Lucretia Rudolph was the wife of 20th US President James Garfield. A woman of keen intellect, she and James enjoyed a scholarly lifestyle together. Yet, due to James's assassination, she was First...
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes: America’s First Ladies #19
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes was a modern First Lady in every sense of the word. Highly educated and passionate about progressive causes like women's rights and the abolition of slavery, she was the first...
Julia Boggs Dent Grant: America’s First Ladies #18
Julia Boggs Dent Grant was a pioneering First Lady in a number of ways. She had a birth defect but didn’t let it hold her back. She was a staunch supporter of women’s rights and opposed white...
Eliza McCardle Johnson: America’s First Ladies #17
Eliza McCardle was the wife of Andrew Johnson and our 17th First Lady. Though she came from an impoverished background and was ill for years during her marriage, she still managed to be an involved...