First Ladies

From Martha Washington
to Michelle Obama

REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION

Betty Boyd Caroli

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Caroli, Betty Boyd.
First ladies : from Martha Washington
to Michelle Obama / Betty Boyd Caroli. — Rev. and updated.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-539285-2
1. Presidents' spouses—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
E176.2.C37 2010
973.09'9—dc22     2010014673

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

IN THE YEARS SINCE I
completed the first edition in 1986, I have become even more aware of the valuable aid that scholars and archivists generously give each other, and I am happy to acknowledge here the dozens of individuals and institutions who contributed to the research and writing of this book.

Members of the Institute for Research in History Reading Group on Cities generously enlarged their mission to include First Ladies in urban studies, and I am grateful to the following for their comments on portions of the manuscript: Cathy Alexander, Jane Allen, Selma Berrol, Barbara Blumberg, Elizabeth Hitz, Nora Mandel, Jean Mensch, and Carol Neuls-Bates.

Two conferences stimulated my thinking on the subject. In April 1984, Betty Ford hosted a meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to explore the role of modern First Ladies. Hundreds of people, including journalists and White House curators, two ex–First Ladies, and the daughters and one granddaughter of other First Ladies exchanged views on how the role of presidential wife had changed. In December 1982, Barbara Welter chaired a New York City conference where newswomen and academics, colleagues of First Ladies, and statisticians evaluated the role of Eleanor Roosevelt and her predecessors. I benefited greatly from both meetings.

The presidential libraries have furnished a great deal of information, and I am grateful to the staffs of the libraries of Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Gerald R. Ford. In the case of two recent presidents whose libraries were not ready for use when I needed them, I had help from Madeline MacBean Edwards, assistant to Rosalynn Carter, who supplied material on the Carter years, and
from Helen McCain Smith, press secretary to Pat Nixon. Rosalynn Carter generously answered many questions not dealt with in her autobiography,
First Lady from Plains
.

Although I attempted to use as many primary sources as possible, I relied heavily on the research and interpretations of historians and political scientists who had gone before. In the course of studying Ellen Wilson and Lucy Hayes, I called on their respective biographers, Frances Wright Saunders and Emily Apt Geer, both of whom responded far beyond what I had a right to expect. Joy Scimé, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on the subject, clarified my thinking on federal regulations on the employment of women in the 1930s. Douglas Lonnstrom and Thomas Kelly, Co-Directors of the Siena Research Institute, shared results of their polls of historians and political scientists. Lester Meigs forced me to consider more carefully what I had written. Margaret Klapthor at the National Museum of American History answered many questions. Phyllis Deutsch assisted in the first stage of the research, and Carl Sferrazza Anthony, who researched the topic of First Ladies for years and published two fascinating volumes on the subject in 1990–1991, helped me throughout the research. Rita Cooley, Professor of Politics (now Emerita) at New York University, was an inspiring mentor when I first knew her, and she has continued her enthusiastic aid beyond the granting of my degree. Lewis Gould offered many helpful suggestions.

Among the many historians and curators who answered my queries were Elizabeth F. Abel, Town Historian of Stillwater, New York; Dale Irene Maugans, of Lawnfield, the Garfield home in Mentor, Ohio; Herbert S. Gary, of the Warren G. Harding House in Marion, Ohio; Lawrence E. Wikander, the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Room, Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts; Betty J. Gallagher and Dale C. Mayer of the Herbert Hoover Library; Mary Ellen Andrew, Elmira College; John Dobson, Library of the University of Tennessee; Mark E. Neely, Jr., of the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, Fort Wayne, Indiana; Kathleen Jacklin, Cornell University Libraries; Polly B. Johnson and Vera Weeks of the Pierce Brigade, Concord, New Hampshire; Arlene C. Palmer of the New Britain (Connecticut) Public Library; and Betty Monkman, Associate Curator at the White House.

Staffs of the following institutions also responded to my requests for information: the Western Reserve Historical Society; the Historical Department of Spiegel Grove, in Fremont, Ohio; the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints; the Cincinnati Historical Society; the Albany Institute of History and Art; the Chicago Historical Society; the Buffalo and Erie County Historical
Society; the Library of the State University of New York at Oswego; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe; the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield; the University of Alabama Library; Yale University Library; the Virginia Historical Society; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Mount Vernon Ladies Association; the Princeton University Library; and the Library of Congress.

For permission to quote from the following manuscript collections, I wish to thank: Cornell University Library, the Moore Family Papers; New Britain Public Library, Elihu Burritt's Journal; the University of Tennessee Library, the Papers of Margaret and Smiley Blanton; Penfield Library of State University at Oswego, the Papers of Millard Fillmore; Massachusetts Historical Society, the Adams Family Papers; the Virginia Historical Society, the letters of Martha Washington; the Library of Congress, the Papers of Woodrow Wilson; and the Ohio Historical Society, the Papers of Warren G. Harding.

Among my nonacademic friends who assisted in this project were Carey Vennema, who provided a new footnote program for my antiquated word processor; Catherine Faulconer, who assisted in selecting photographs; Enid Bell, Victoria Wion, and Richard Beeson, who offered many suggestions.

New York City is rich in libraries and I have used many of them during the course of researching this book. I am particularly grateful to the staffs of the libraries of New York University, Columbia University, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the 42nd Street Public Library where I worked in the Wertheim Room. Librarians at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York have for many years responded generously to my requests for help.

Released time from teaching came from Kingsborough Community College (in the early stage of research) and from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The latter granted me a Fellowship that freed me from teaching during the 1985–1986 academic year, when I finished the project.

Susan Rabiner, of Oxford University Press, not only edited this book—she helped shape it through several different versions. She is the ideal editor, both critic and friend, and I thank her and her diligent, cheerful assistants, Rachel Toor, who entered the editing process even before beginning work at Oxford, and Judith Mintz, who came in for the final version.

Livio Caroli arrived in New York in 1965 with very little interest in American history (which he found lacking in political intrigue when compared with that of his native Venice) but he has gradually revised
his opinion. His “outsider's view” that the institution of First Lady was an interesting American invention helped convince me that the subject required a book, and he has enthusiastically supported the project to its completion.

B. B. C.

New York City
September 1994

Note to 2010 edition

In the many years I have watched White House occupants, trying to figure out what was innovation and what was repetition, I have had the help of family, friends, and colleagues. How can I thank all those who clipped articles, called my attention to obscure sources, encouraged me to think differently? Two groups have been particularly helpful—the Narrative Writing Group and the seminar Women Writing Women's Lives.

As this book has grown over the last two decades, adding the records of four more First Ladies since the first edition, it became necessary to cut the previous chapters 11, “Presidential Wives and the Press,” and 12, “The Women They Married … Some Conclusions.” Those chapters, still relevant in many ways to understanding the curious job of First Lady, can be found in the three prior editions that Oxford University Press published in 1987, 1995, and 2003.

Current usage favors not capitalizing the title of First Lady, but because the preference was different when I started this book more than thirty years ago, I have maintained the usage employed in earlier editions—I continue to capitalize the title.

Over three decades of association with Oxford University Press, I have had the enthusiastic support of many editors, production staffs, and publicists. But the team on this edition outshines them all. I want to thank Christine Dahlin for overseeing production in this new e-publishing age; Adithi Kasturirangan for attending to marketing in a bleak market time; and Tim Bent and especially Dayne Poshusta, who contributed far more than any author has the right to expect.

B.B.C.

New York City
March 2010

Introduction

1. Setting Precedents: The First Presidents' Wives (1789–1829)

2. Young Substitutes for First Ladies (1829–1869)

3. Three Exceptions: Sarah Childress Polk, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Julia Dent Grant

4. The Limited Promise of the “New Woman” (1877–1901)

5. The Office of First Lady: A Twentieth-Century Development