First Lady Anna Tuthill Harrison

Biography

Wikipedia contributors, "Anna Harrison," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, < link > (accessed April 24, 2023).

Anna Tuthill Harrison (née Symmes; July 25, 1775 – February 25, 1864) was the first lady of the United States in 1841 as the wife of President William Henry Harrison. She served in the role for only one month, as her husband was afflicted with pneumonia and died shortly after his term began. She was also the paternal grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison. She never entered the White House during her tenure as first lady, remaining the only presidential wife to never visit the capital during her husband's presidency. At age 65 at the start of her husband's presidential term, Harrison was the oldest woman ever to assume the role of first lady, a record held until Jill Biden became first lady at age 69 in 2021. She also has the distinction of holding the title for the shortest length of time, and the first first lady to be widowed while holding the title. Harrison was the last first lady to have been born before the inauguration of George Washington.

Anna was raised by her grandparents in Long Island and given an education better than that of most women. She married military officer William Henry Harrison against her father's wishes in 1795, and she raised their family of ten children in the frontier of Ohio and Indiana while William pursued a political career. Anna would see nine of her ten children die over the following decades, causing her to become more deeply involved in her Presbyterian faith. She became first lady when William became president in 1841, though she did not attend his inauguration. William died while Anna was preparing to travel to Washington, D.C., only one month into his term. Anna lived the remainder of her life in Ohio, first in their family log cabin, and then with her only surviving son. Her short tenure as first lady, her absence from the White House, and the destruction of her personal papers in a fire have caused her to be overlooked by historians, and her life has been the subject of relatively little scholarly analysis.

Early Life

Anna was born at Flatbrookville, Walpack Township, New Jersey on July 25, 1775 to Judge John Cleves and Anna Tuthill Symmes of Long Island. Her father was a Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and later became a prominent landowner in southwestern Ohio. When her mother died in 1776 her father disguised himself as a British soldier to carry her on horseback through the British lines to her grandparents on Long Island, who cared for her during the war. Her father was also a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and the Chairman of the Sussex County Committee of Safety.

Anna was raised by her grandparents, receiving an unusually broad education for a woman of her time. She attended Clinton Academy in East Hampton on Long Island, and the private school of Isabella Graham in New York City. She was raised as a Presbyterian, and her education had a strong religious component.[1]: 54  Her father visited her at the end of the war in 1783,[2]: 100  but he then moved to the Northwest Territory and founded the town of North Bend, Ohio. She joined her father and her stepmother Susannah Livingston in 1794, at the age of 19.[1]: 54 

Marriage and family

While visiting relatives in Lexington, Kentucky in the spring of 1795, she met Lieutenant William Henry Harrison, in town on military business. Harrison was stationed at nearby Fort Washington. Anna's father thoroughly disapproved of Harrison, largely because he wanted to spare his daughter the hardships of army camp life. Despite his decree that the two stop seeing each other, the courtship flourished behind his back.

They married on November 25, 1795 at the home of Dr. Stephen Wood, treasurer of the Northwest Territory, at North Bend (her father was away in Cincinnati on business). The couple honeymooned at Fort Washington, as Harrison was still on duty. Two weeks later, at a farewell dinner for General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, Symmes confronted his new son-in-law for the first time since their wedding. Addressing him sternly, he demanded to know how he intended to support his daughter. William replied, “By my sword, and my own right arm, sir.” Not until his son-in-law had achieved fame on the battlefield did Symmes come to accept him.

The couple apparently had a happy marriage despite the succession of tragedies in the untimely deaths of five of their grown children.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/ah9.html

Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison

Anna Harrison was too ill to travel when her husband set out from Ohio in 1841 for his inauguration. It was a long trip and a difficult one even by steamboat and railroad, with February weather uncertain at best, and she at age 65 was well acquainted with the rigors of frontier journeys.

As a girl of 19, bringing pretty clothes and dainty manners, she went out to Ohio with her father, Judge John Cleves Symmes, who had taken up land for settlement on the "north bend" of the Ohio River. She had grown up a young lady of the East, completing her education at a boarding school in New York City.

A clandestine marriage on November 25, 1795, united Anna Symmes and Lt. William Henry Harrison, an experienced soldier at 22. Though the young man came from one of the best families of Virginia, Judge Symmes did not want his daughter to face the hard life of frontier forts; but eventually, seeing her happiness, he accepted her choice.

Though Harrison won fame as an Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, he spent much of his life in a civilian career. His service in Congress as territorial delegate from Ohio gave Anna and their two children a chance to visit his family at Berkeley, their plantation on the James River. Her third child was born on that trip, at Richmond in September 1800. Harrison's appointment as governor of Indiana Territory took them even farther into the wilderness; he built a handsome house at Vincennes that blended fortress and plantation mansion. Five more children were born to Anna.

Facing war in 1812, the family went to the farm at North Bend. Before peace was assured, she had borne two more children. There, at news of her husband's landslide electoral victory in 1840, home-loving Anna said simply: "I wish that my husband's friends had left him where he is, happy and contented in retirement."

When she decided not to go to Washington with him, the President-elect asked his daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison, widow of his namesake son, to accompany him and act as hostess until Anna's proposed arrival in May. Half a dozen other relatives happily went with them. On April 4, exactly one month after his inauguration, he died, so Anna never made the journey. She had already begun her packing when she learned of her loss.

Accepting grief with admirable dignity, she stayed at her home in North Bend until the house burned in 1858; she lived nearby with her last surviving child, John Scott Harrison, until she died in February 1864 at the age of 88.

Family

• Parents: John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill
• Husband: President William Henry Harrison Sr. - married Nov 25 1795 in North Bend, Northwest Territory, United States. Son of Benjamin Harrison and Elizabeth Bassett.

Anna and William had ten children together nine of whom lived past childhood. However, five of those nine, though they grew up, did not outlive their parents.

Children:

1. Elizabeth Bassett Short (born Harrison)
2. John Cleves Symmes Harrison
3. Lucy Singleton Este (born Harrison)
4. William Henry Harrison Jr.
5. John Scott Harrison
6. Benjamin Harrison
7. Mary Symmes Thornton (born Harrison)
8. Carter Bassett Harrison
9. Anna Tuthill Taylor (born Harrison)
10. Col. James Findlay Harrison

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Origins

• The descendants of William and Elizabeth Tuttle, who came from old to New England in 1635, and settled in New Haven in 1639, with numerous biographical notes and sketches : also, some account of the descendants of John Tuttle, of Ipswich; and Henry Tuthill, of Hingham, Mass. (1883)
• http://www.archive.org/stream/descendantsofwil01tutt#page/n71/mode/2up
• 22. Henry Tuthill was father of Henry 2d, who was father of Henry 3d, whose dau. Anna Tuthill, m. John Cleves (s. of Rev. Timothy) Symmes, b. July 10, 1742. He was an officer in the rev. army, and after one of the judges of the Supreme court of New Jersey. Not long after the war he bought a tract of land some twenty miles in length, on the north side of the Oldo river, including the site of Cincinnati. He removed to Ohio and res. at North Bend, then called Cleves, having been appointed by Washington U. S. Dist. Judge for the North West Ter. He d. at N. B., Feb., 1614. He m. (2) Widow Halsey of N. J.; (3) Susanna, dau. of Hon. Wm. Livingston of N. J. Her sister was wife of John Jay. By 1st m. he had;
• 1. 'ANNA, who lived with her grandfather Tuthill at Southold, educated at the female academy at E. Hampton; afterwards a pupil of Mrs. Isabella Graham, and res. in her family. In 1764 accompanied her father and step-mother to res. at No. Bend. where she m. Nov. 22, 1795, William Henry Harrison, then a young officer in command of Fort Hamilton; afterwards President of the United States, in which office he d. in the White House at Washington. She d. Feb. 25, 1861, a. 88 yrs. and 7 months. About the year 1853 the compiler while engaged in surveying a route for the Cincinnati & St. Louis R. R., accepted the proffered hospitality of one of the sons of President Harrrison, then living a few miles below North Bend (Hon. Scott Harrison.) Mr. H. referred to his Tuthill relationships, saying his family had always held them in high esteem. Rev. Joseph Tuthill Daryea, D. D., is of this family.

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• i. Henry, of Acquebogue, b. before Dec., 1715, d. 17 Sept., 1793; m. 16 Mch., 1738, Phoebe Horton (Caleb, Caleb, Caleb, Barnabas), d. 3 Nov., 1793, in her 75th yr. Henry's grand-da., 'ANNA SYMMES, m. President WM. HENRY HARRISON, and was the grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison.

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Notes

• She was called Nancy when she was young to differentiate from her mother; but after the death of her mother on 25 July 1776, she was called Anna.
• Birthplace also reported as Flatbrook NJ and Morristown NJ.

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Grouseland, the Harrison home in Vincennes

William Henry Harrison House, Vincennes, Indiana, April 1934. Photo by the Shores Studio. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

Anna Harrison, (nee Symmes) memorial marker. William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial. Photo by Mike Reed from Find A Grave website.

References

1. Tuthill family of Tharston, Norfolk County, England and Southold, Suffolk County, New York; also written Totyl, Totehill, Tothill, Tuttle, etc (1898) http://www.archive.org/stream/tuthillfamilyoft00aker#page/13/mode/2up
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Tuthill_Symmes cites
   1. Schneider, Dorothy; Schneider, Carl J. (2010). "Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison". First Ladies: A Biographical Dictionary (3rd ed.). Facts on File. pp. 53–57. ISBN 978-1-4381-0815-5.
   2. Young, Nancy Beck (1996). Gould, Lewis L. (ed.). American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy. Garland Publishing. pp. 98–108. ISBN 0-8153-1479-5.
   3. Boller, Paul F. (1988). Presidential Wives. Oxford University Press. pp. 75–77.
3. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LKDZ-T5V
4. Ancestors of American presidents. by Roberts, Gary Boyd (1989). 9. William Henry Harrison and 23. Benjamin Harrison. Page 12-13. < Archive.Org > (borrow for an hour with free ID).
5. Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison < link >