AAUW speaker unveils ‘forgotten’ First Ladies

Julia Gardiner might never have married President John Tyler but for an explosion on the maiden voyage of the naval ship Princeton in February of 1844.

That’s just one fascinating fact about “Forgotten First Ladies,” a presentation that retired attorney Eileen Newhouse shared last week with the Owatonna AAUW. The organization celebrated its 50^th anniversary in 2002.

Newhouse said she chose Julia Tyler, Julia Dent Grant, Frances Cleveland, and Florence Harding for her presentation because they were from different periods of time and were “temperamentally different.”

Also, she said, they “had interesting lives.”

Tyler fits firmly into the last category, even before she married the country’s 10^th president. Born to a wealthy family, she allowed her image to be used in a department store ad, much to the horror of “polite society.”

“The unwritten rule of the day was that a woman’s name should appear in the newspaper only three times: the announcement of her birth, the announcement of her marriage, and the announcement of her death,” Newhouse said.

John Tyler proposed to Julia twice, and twice, she turned him down. After a canon exploded on the Princeton, her father was among the six who were killed.

“When she heard the news, she fainted right into the arms of Tyler,” Newhouse said. “She said that’s when she fell in love with him.”

Julia was 24 when she married John, who was 54. He had eight children with his first wife and seven with Julia, fathering more children than any other U.S. president.

While Julia Tyler was in the White House just eight months, Julia Dent Grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant, felt eight years wasn’t enough. Also born to a wealthy family, she met her husband through her brother.

Because Ulysses Grant was a military man, the couple often lived apart. Julia Grant had premonitions; one of them led to the Grants turning down an invitation to see a play with President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary. Instead, the couple visited their children in Pennsylvania on the night Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Her foresight, in the form of a dream, also led to the couple leaving Chicago just before a fire burned that city, killing about 300 people, in 1871.

Frances Cleveland was the first First Lady to have been married in the White House, to Grover Cleveland, the country’s 22^nd and 24^th president. She was also the youngest First Lady, just 21 when she married her 49-year-old groom.

“There was enormous interest in this wedding,” Newhouse said. “There was something in the paper (about it) every day.”

Frances was a popular First Lady, Newhouse said, receiving thousands of fan letters and mobbed by fans every time she appeared in public. Her image was used in advertisements–without her knowledge or permission–for bread, liver pills, tobacco pipes.

“Everything she did was copied,” Newhouse said. “The way she wore her hair, the way she sat for photographs.”

When two reporters made up the story that Frances had decided to stop wearing a bustle, the fashion accessory began to disappear.

Newhouse said her final subject, Florence Harding, put her husband in the White House. But she had a bit of a rough start.

The eldest child of the richest man in Marion, Ohio, may have been wanting to spite her controlling father when she began hanging out with the “local bad boy.” Pregnant at 19, she ran off with him and gave birth to a son. The bad boy left, and she returned–penniless–to her hometown.

Florence was making a meagre living by giving piano lessons when her father offered to raise her son. Two years later, she met Warren G. Harding, a newspaper man who was a gambler with an insatiable appetite for sex.

When her husband suffered his second nervous breakdown, the newspaper’s business manager quit, and Florence took over–instituting practices that made the paper profitable.

Warren Harding had multiple affairs, including some with his wife’s friends, during their marriage. But because a divorce would have ended any political ambitions, she stuck with him.

“Florence saw a future for Harding in politics,” Newhouse said. “She had the ambition; he had the charm.”

Florence took charge of every aspect of her husband’s career, as he rose through the state and federal ranks–a campaign manager, Newhouse said. Beginning in World War I, she visited soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, promoted animal rights with their Airedale, and called herself a suffragist, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment when it was introduced in 1923.

When Harding died during a cross-country trip, rumors flew that Florence had poisoned him. He died of a massive heart attack.

“If first ladies could be judge based on their own accomplishments… Florence would be one of the best,” Newhouse said. “Unfortunately, history has doomed her to be known as the wife of one of the worst failures of the presidency.”

AAUW program co-chair Jane Parr said Newhouse has also spoken to the group about female Supreme Court justices. Those types of educational programs reflect the organization’s values and mission to advocate for gender equity for women and girls.

“Our work is based on research, education, and advocacy,” Parr said. “That vision is really equity for all people. There’s a lot of intersectionality with racial issues, gender identity and preferences.”

The AAUW raises money each year to provide college and university scholarships for women and girls who are Steele County residents, as well as camperships and scholarships for 6^th-8^th graders interested in science and math programs, Parr said.

During its big fundraiser, Taste of Steele County, local restaurants offer samples of their cuisine. This year, the event happens on Sept. 18.