Presidents

Our first First Lady

by


             

I often get ideas for this blog from my ‘It happened on this day in history’ calendar.  When I turned to today’s entry I saw it noted that today was the birthday of Martha Washington and I thought it would be interesting to look up fun facts on her for this blog.  Once I started my research, though, I discovered my calendar had it wrong.  Other sources I checked all agreed that her birthday was, in fact, June 2nd.   Be that as it may, however, I’m going to list the information I dug up, much of it news to me.

Personal Stats

  • Full name:  Martha Dandridge Custis Washington
  • Born: June 2, 1731
  • Place of Birth: Williamsburg, Virginia
  • Father: John Dandridge
  • Mother: Frances Dandridge
  • Husbands (2)
    (1) Daniel Parke Curtis (died 8 years into the marriage) Children: 1 daughter and 1 son
    (2) George Washington  Children (none)
  • Education: No formal education
  • Religion: Episcopalian
  • Died: May 22, 1802
  • Place of Death: Mount Vernon, Virginia

 

Interesting/Fun Facts

  • She married her first husband when she was 18 – he was twenty years her senior.  Their home was called the White House Plantation.
  • The death of her first husband left her wealthy in her own right.
  • Martha did NOT enjoy role of First Lady – she felt trapped by it
  • She had a ship, a row galley, named in her honor – The USS Lady Washington. 
    It was the first U.S. Military ship to be named in honor of a woman. 
    It was also the first U.S. military ship to be named for a person who was still alive.
  • She is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note.  Hers was the face on the front of the $1 Silver Certificates of 1886 and 1891 and on the back of the one issued in 1896.
  • She was the first American woman to be commemorated by a postage stamp – the 1902 eight cent stamp.  In subsequent years she had two other stamps issued in her honor – a 1923 four cent stamp and a 1938 one and a half cent stamp.
  • She often followed her husband into the battlefield when he served as commander in chief of the Continental army.  In fact, she spent the infamous winter at Valley Forge at his side, and was instrumental in maintaining some level of morale among officers and enlisted troops.
  • She was opposed to her husband’s election as President of the U.S and refused to attend his inauguration.
  • The title ‘First Lady’ was not coined until after Martha’s death.  She was known as ‘Lady Washington’.
  • She was jealous of her privacy and destroyed most of the letters she wrote to her husband as well as the letters he wrote to her.

 

Quotations attributed to Martha Washington

  • “I am fond of only what comes from the heart.”
  • “I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go.”
  • “Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance…is a celebration of that miracle.”
  • “I live a very dull life here… indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from… “

 

All in all, it sounds like Martha Washington was an interesting, intelligent, strong-willed woman – one I would have enjoyed meeting.

Love is Eternal…Mary Todd Lincoln

by

MarryingMinda Crop to UseWhile the Civil War raged, Southerners scorned her as a traitor to her birth. Citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. She was holding her husband’s hand when he was shot by an assassin, and declared insane later in her life. Who was she?

Mary Todd Lincoln.Mary Todd Lincoln 1

Since I wrote about her husband Abe a few weeks ago, I decided to learn a little more about her. Mary Ann Todd was born on December 13, 1818, one of seven children born into a prominent family in Lexington, Kentucky. Her mother passed away when she was seven, and she later described her childhood as “desolate.” An excellent student, she spoke French fluently.

In 1839, Mary moved to Springfield, Illinois, to live at the home of her older sister, and here, the tiny young woman became a popular socialite. She dated both Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, but it was Lincoln who won her heart. At their wedding in 1843, he gave her a ring engraved with the words “Love is Eternal.”

Over the next eleven years, four sons were born to the couple who had settled in Springfield. Mary was known as a very loving, devoted mother, but sadly, only Robert (1843-1926) lived to adulthood. When her husband was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846, Mary and the children lived with him in Washington for part of his single term. Back home in 1849, Abraham practiced law for five years before his interests returned to politics. After his well-known series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, he was elected over three other Presidential candidates in November 1860 and inaugurated the next March as the 16th president.Mary Todd Lincoln 2

 Mary’s position as First Lady fulfilled her high social ambitions, but her White House years were a mixture of triumph and misery. Among her joys were refurbishing the White House and spending much time on visits with injured soldiers in hospitals. In addition to bringing them food and flowers, she read to them, wrote them letters, and raised $1,000 for the Christmas dinner at a military hospital. Mary provided support for the Contraband Relief Association which helped blacks who came to the North during the Civil War. She was ardently opposed to slavery, and she strongly supported her husband’s pro-Union policies.

However, Mary incurred ire for extravagant shopping orgies that were deemed unpatriotic during such hard times. Her reputation was soundly thrashed because she had relatives who sided with the South in the war. In fact, several kinfolk died fighting for the Confederacy. Resulting, her own loyalty to the Union was often suspect.

Mary Todd Lincoln 3Five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant in April, 1865, her husband was tragically assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Mary never recovered from the horrific event.  A month later, she left Washington to live in Chicago, trying a couple of years later to raise money by selling her old clothes through dealers in New York. I loved this tidbit. It reminds me of Princess Diana.

However, unlike Prince William who supported Diana’s venture, Mary’s son Robert — fast on his way to becoming a highly-regarded attorney– was highly embarrassed by her unsuccessful scheme. She moved to Europe for three years, visiting health spas to ease increasingly bothersome arthritis. Upon the death of son Tad, her irrational fears and behaviors alarmed Robert, her surviving son, and he instigated an insanity hearing.

A jury of twelve men declared Mary insane after witnesses testified to erratic behavior and habits. The judge admitted “the disease was of unknown duration; the cause is unknown.” Mary spent about four months in a private sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois. In September 1875, she went to Springfield once again to live with her sister’s family. The next year a second jury found her sane.

Later she traveled to France, visiting spas as her health began to decline. It is suspected she suffered from undiagnosed diabetes, spinal arthritis and migraine headaches. By the time she returned to her sister’s home in 1880, she was going blind. She passed away on July 16, 1882, at age 63. Since physicians wrote “paralysis” on the death certificate, the cause was probably a stroke.

Mary was buried next to her husband in the Lincoln Tomb Cemetery in Springfield. On her wedding ring, quite thin from wear, the words “Love is Eternal” were still visible.

 All in all, it doesn’t sound much like a HEA for the Lincolns, but I sure like that phrase, Love is Eternal. It broke my heart that Mary had to spend months in an asylum on the whim of twelve, make that 13, men. (I guess fourteen, counting her son.) But I was glad to find out Mary and Abe had support and some good times between them, although I cannot remotely imagine losing so many children. Mary Todd Lincoln 4

How about you? Any more info on Mary Todd Lincoln come to mind? Any other First Ladies whom you admire?

“Writing is the greatest adventure in the world.” ~Abraham Lincoln

by

MarryingMinda Crop to Use

 Okay. I admit it. I’m reading Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, the current bestseller by Seth Grahame-Smith. It sounds real LOL…excerpts of Lincoln’s “journals,” motivations for his blood quests including avenging his mother’s death by a vampire…but this is what I found out about Lincoln. No vampire hunting in sight.  

Born poor on February 12, in 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky, Abe Lincoln was no slouch at writing despite spending barely a year in a one-room schoolhouse. As a young politician, he wrote speeches in the long, ornate manner popular in the day, but he eventually simplified his style in deference to ordinary people.

The glorious, unforgettable Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863 at the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery, is less than 300 words in length. But some of his phrases changed America. “…a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom….” “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Throughout his life, he read every single speech to his wife Mary before a public presentation of it. Mary’s wealthy parents had strongly opposed the marriage, and it’s claimed the union was tumultuous, but she is often considered one of Lincoln’s trusted advisers and confidants. Of the four sons born to them, only one survived into adulthood.

Although detractors considered Lincoln coarse and vulgar, referring to him as “the ape baboon of the prairie,” his rustic manner, wit and wisdom were highly regarded by the literary greats of his day, including Walt Whitman and Nathaniel Hawthorne. (If you haven’t yet read Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain!” or “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” you’re in for something wonderful.)  Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the ground-breaking novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, claimed Lincoln’s writing deserved to be “inscribed in letters of gold.”

president-abraham-lincoln-abeIndeed,  Abe Lincoln has an important hand in enhancing the climate and culture of the 19th century, in addition to his role as the Great Emancipator. The Homestead Act he signed in 1862 “opened the West” and helped establish America’s heartland, even as it tragically displaced native tribes. Settlers could claim 65 hectares, 160 acres or a quarter-mile section, as their own as long as they farmed and improved the land for five years.  The Nebraskans in several of my books definitely have a homesteading heritage. 

WHen you carve your turkey on the last Thursday in November, you owe it to President Lincoln. He ordered government offices closed on November 28, 1861, for a local day of thanks. On that date, prominent magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale wrote him a letter, urging him to make an official “national and fixed union festival” of Thanksgiving.

 His proclamation setting the last Thursday of November as a “day of Thanksgiving and praise” was dated October 3, 1863, perhaps an attempt to ease hearts and lift spirits after the horrific battle of Gettysburg a few months before. One year later, the proclamation letter written by Secretary of State William Seward was sold to benefit Union troops.president-lincoln-lying-state

I found out some fun facts about our 16th president in doing my homework for this blog.

1. He was the tallest president at 6’4″

2. He carried letters, bills, and notes in his signature stove pipe hat.

3. He was the first president to have a beard.

4. He patented a system to alter buoyancy of steamboats in 1849.

5. He created a national banking system in 1863, resulting in a standardized currency.

6. He loved animals and had horses, cats, dogs, and a turkey as pets. His beloved horse, Old Bob, was part of his funeral procession.

7. He was the first president assassinated.

Although President Lincoln suffered from deep depression, usually called melancholia at that time, he often invented jokes and funny sayings for family and friends. I’ll leave off with several of my favorites.

1. If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

2. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

3. Whatever you are, be a good one.

Anything else you’d like to add about this great president?