Although Anna Harrison, wife of the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison, never set foot in the White House during her husband’s one-month term in office, she still left a legacy of steadfast resourcefulness in her dedication to her family and her country.
Anna Tuthill Symmes, who was born in 1775 near Morristown, New Jersey, to an associate justice and colonel of the Continental Army, was the first first lady have received a formal education. In 1795, she eloped with William.
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Although Anna bore the most children of any first lady to date, she outlived all but one of her 10 children.
According to the Society for the Recognition of Famous People, although Anna exhibited no social or political ambitions apart from her responsibilities to her family, she was a devoted and active member of her local church community and valued hospitality. She would often invite the entire congregation over to her home after church on Sundays, and the Harrison home often served as a sort of headquarters for military and political figures after William Henry Harrison was named the territorial governor of Indiana in 1801.
Anna raised her family on the Indiana frontier amid constant threats of Native American Indian raids and the federal government’s attempts at seizing the Harrisons’ property. But Anna entertained Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, as well as Vice President Aaron Burr, amongst a myriad of others, during those years.
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When William Henry Harrison was elected president in 1841 at age 68 — the oldest president in office until Ronald Reagan was elected at age 69 — Anna sent her daughter-in-law to preside temporarily at the White House in her stead because of her own ill health at the time,
according to the National First Ladies' Library. But just as she began packing up her belongings to join William in the White House a month later, she was greeted by the shocking news of his sudden death.
Although all but one of her children died before 1846 and her house was destroyed by a fire in 1858, Anna held fast to her faith and was known to repeatedly quote the Bible verse “Be still, and know that I am God, ” the First Ladies' Library said.
By the time she died in 1864 at age 88, Anna had shown herself to be a resourceful woman who had survived on the expanding U.S. frontier and had remained unwavering in her core values.
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