|
| Affiliation | Whig |
|
| Name | Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison |
| Address |
North Bend, Ohio , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
July 25, 1775
|
| Died | February 25, 1864
(88 years)
|
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | Chronicler
Feb 14, 2022 11:19am |
| Tags |
|
| Info | Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison
Born: July 25, 1775 at Solitude, a farm on the Flatbrook River, Sussex County, New Jersey (near Morristown)
Died: February 25, 1864
Father: Judge John Cleves Symmes - landowner, officer, Senator
Mother: Anna Tuthill Symmes (died 1776)
Ancestry: English
Religion: Presbyterian
Education: Four years after her mother's death in 1776, Anna was taken to live with her maternal grandparents, Henry and Phoebe Tuthill, in New York City. Anna's father, an officer in the American Army, donned a British uniform to slip into the British occupied New York to see his daughter. Anna's grandmother saw to it that Anna had the best education possible. She was sent to the fashionable Clinton Academy in East Hampton and, eventually, to the boarding school of Isabella Marshall Graham. Miss Graham instilled in Anna a serious view of life and a devotion to duty. Anna Harrison was the first First Lady to have had a public education.
Physical Description: Small, petite, with dark hair and eyes, Anna Symmes had an oval face, full lips and a cleft chin. Usually healthy all of her life, she would face the hardships of frontier life with courage and strength. She, having survived ten childbirths, must have had an inner strength not usually seen in an age of frequent deaths in childbirth.
Husband: William Henry Harrison (1773 - 1841)
Courtship and Marriage: In 1794, Anna moved to the Northwest Territory (which included Ohio) with her father and his third wife, Susanna, who Anna had grown to love. One of the towns founded on the extensive lands owned by Judge Symmes was the town of North Bend, Ohio (the site of the burial place of President and Mrs. William Henry Harrison and the birthplace of President Benjamin Harrison). While a house was being prepared for them, Anna and her stepmother went to Lexington, Kentucky to visit Anna's older sister, Maria, who had married Peyton Short and settled there. It was here that Anna met and fell in love with a young army officer, William Henry Harrison. Judge Symmes took a dim view of the romance due to Harrison's choice of the Army as a profession. When asked how he intended to support a wife, Harrison replied, "With my sword and my good right arm." The circumstances of their eventual marriage are shrouded in some mystery: some say they eloped; other say that Judge Symmes relented, and they were married in his parlor. We do know that Judge Symmes came to admire his daughter's husband.
Date of Marriage: November 25, 1795 in North Bend, Ohio
Children:
1. Elizabeth Bassett Harrison Short (1796-1846)
2. John Cleves Symmes Harrison (1819 - 1830)
3. Lucy Singleton Harrison Este (1800 - 1826)
4. William Henry Harrison II (1802 - 1838) - married Jane Findlay Irwin (1804 - 1846) in 1824. Jane served as White House Hostess for the ill Mrs. Harrison during the one month presidency of William Henry Harrison.
5. John Scott Harrison (1804-1878) - was the father of Benjamin (1833 - 1901) with his second wife, Elizabeth Irwin
6. Benjamin Harrison (1806 - 1840)
7. Mary Symmes Harrison Thornton (1809 - 1842)
8. Carter Bassett Harrison (1811 - 1839)
9. Anna Tuthill Harrison Taylor (1813 - 1845)
10. James Findlay Harrison (1814 - 1817)
Anna Harrison bore the largest number of children by a First Lady, and she outlived all but one.
Life before the White House (1795 - 1841): The years were certainly busy. Anna would bear ten children between 1796 and 1814. She moved often with her husband who would have a successful career in the Army and in politics. Harrison served as representative for the Northwest Territory, first governor of the Indiana Territory (the Harrison home, Groveland, in Vincennes, Indiana, is still standing and is a beautiful three story brick home, filled with beauty and elegance, a living tie to the "coon skin, log cabin" image of the 1840 election), commander of the Army of the Northwest in the War of 1812, state legislator, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator and minister to Columbia. Anna usually stayed at home, tending to the ever-growing family. She had moments of fear of Indian raids and often lacked information about the well being of relatives - all part of life on the frontier. She managed her husband's land holdings. She later ruefully admitted that she didn't manage well, leaving the Harrisons short of funds, which forced Anna to stay home while her husband ventured forth. After her father's death, Anna inherited a farm in North Bend. It was here that she would spend most of her life. It had a house named "The Bend" which grew to 22 rooms. The expenses of educating and marrying their children kept the Harrisons in constant debt. A number of their son's died of alcoholic problems, and William Henry had to take on their debts as well. The Harrisons would lose five of their children in the 1820s and 1830s, and three more in the 1840s. Only Anna's faith, gloomy as it was at times, got her through these hard times. Anna objected when it was suggested that her husband run for president in 1836, and she was relieved when President Van Buren defeated him. After the death of her sons Carter in 1839 and Benjamin in 1840, Anna fell ill, and the constant flow of visitors left her little time to recover. Even so, she retained her beauty. According to some accounts, a newspaper article referred to her "handsomeness" at sixty-five. Due to Anna's poor health and their advancing ages (both were in their late sixties), Anna was even more opposed to William Henry running for president in 1840 than she had been in 1836. She feared the toll and stress that would accompany the Presidency. The election of the sixty-eight year old Harrison filled his wife with fear and certain resentment.
First Lady (March 4, 1841 - April 4, 1841): Still recovering from her serious illness of the summer of 1840, Mrs. Harrison decided to wait until the spring to move to the White House, when the weather would be more moderate. She asked her widowed daughter-in-law, Jane Irwin Harrison, to serve as hostess until she arrived. Jane Harrison asked her aunt, Mrs. Jane Irwin Findlay (died 1850) to accompany her. A month after the inauguration, while Anna was packing her things for her move to Washington, word was sent that her husband had died of pneumonia. The family already in Washington accompanied the body back to North Bend, where Anna met them at the house. She never made it to Washington.
Death: February 25, 1864 - aged 88 years, 215 days. After being voted a pension - a lump sum of $25,000 - Anna Harrison faced a bleak and lonely widowhood due to the debts left by her husband and children. She would be the first to be given the right to "free frank" her letters, and her autograph (which is highly sought after) usually appears in this form. She kept up with current events and had strong objections to policies of both the administrations of Tyler and Polk. Strongly opposed to slavery, Anna encouraged her grandsons to fight for the Union. After the farm "The Bend" burned in 1858, Anna went to live at the home of her only living child, John Scott Harrison. It was at his home that she died in 1864.
Burial: Anna is buried in the Harrison vault, under the tomb of her husband, in North Bend, Ohio overlooking the Ohio River.
Legacy: Aside from her unusually good education, there is little to mark Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison's life as especially different from thousands of other frontier women of her generation. Intelligent, devout, courageous and beautiful, Anna Harrison must always remain a shadowy figure because of the dearth of information, lack of letters and the fact that she never lived in the White House. This is unfortunate, because she had the ability and training to have done a good, probably conventional, job as First Lady.
|
 | BOOKS |
 |
|
| Title |
Purchase |
Contributor |
|
| Start Date |
End Date |
Type |
Title |
Contributor |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
| INFORMATION LINKS |
|
|
|
