Here's Where It Gets Interesting - America’s Most Overlooked First Lady, Anna Harrison

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

America’s shortest presidency produced one of its most overlooked First Ladies. Anna Harrison didn’t even make it to the White House before William Henry Harrison skipped wearing a coat to his inauguration, caught a cold, and died from pneumonia just 31 days later. Shaped by revolution and a New York education, Anna defied expectations, from eloping against her father’s wishes to running school on the Ohio frontier. Her story is a reminder that history is often shaped by the women it overlooks. If you’d like to submit a question for Sharon to answer, head to ThePreamble.com/podcast – we’d love to hear from you there. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at ThePreamble.com – it’s free! Join hundreds of thousands of people who still believe understanding is an act of hope. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about another first lady who, guess what, also never made it into the White House. If you've been listening, you'll know that this has been a recurring theme of the past few president's wives, Rachel Jackson, Hannah Van Buren, and now Anna Harrison. But this time, the tragedy wasn't the first ladies. It was the presidents. Anna's husband, William Henry Harrison, died just one month into his presidency. And while Anna technically held the title of First Lady for about 30 days, she hadn't even finished preparing for the trip to Washington, D.C., before the news of her husband's death reached her. I'm Sharon McMahon. And this is the Preamble podcast. Now back to our story.

In 1779, legend has it that a man named John Sims galloped out of New York City. The Revolutionary War was raging, and John, wearing a British military uniform, flew past one red coat encampment after another. What the British didn't know was that Sims was an officer in the Continental Army and tucked into his traveling clothes. with him was his four-year-old daughter, Anna. John made it to his destination without being discovered and was able to deliver young Anna to her final destination, the home of her maternal grandparents on Long Island. Three years earlier, John's wife, Anna's mother, had died suddenly. John and his wife had already raised a daughter, Maria, who was 13 years older than Anna,

and Maria was likely, safely away at boarding school. John had done his very best to care for his baby daughter alone, but with war raging all around and his responsibilities in the army, he needed to get her to safety and to a family who would provide for her needs. Anna's family, the Sims on her father's side and the Tuttleys on her late mother's side, were well known in New York and New Jersey. After the Revolutionary War ended, her father John rose through the ranks of the judicial system, and became the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Anna's grandparents were part of an established East Hampton family with deep roots in the area and a reputation as intellectuals. As Anna grew living on Long Island with her grandparents, they were devoted to giving her a top-notch education. They wanted nothing but the best for little Anna, who had already been through a lot. They sent her first to the newly opened Clinton Academy. me, a co-ed school that was named after New York's first governor, George Clinton. But by the time she was 12, her grandparents moved her to the Isabella Marshall Graham private boarding school in New York City. And I need to pause here for a moment and tell you a little bit about Isabella Marshall Graham and her school. It's very interesting. Isabella was a pretty forward-thinking woman of her time. She grew up in Scotland, and there she attended a church led by the Reverend John Witherspoon. man who later immigrated to the United States and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Isabella married in Scotland and had five children, but her husband died when they were young.

Isabella had many mouths to feed and no income, and so she did something unconventional. She opened a school for girls in Scotland. This was the 1780s. There were often rudimentary schools for young children, small places, where they gathered to learn to read and write, but the opportunities for girls to continue their education beyond that were really few and far between. Girls from wealthy families might have gone to finishing schools or learned directly from tutors,

but rarely received a formal education in the same way that boys did during the 18th century. When the Revolutionary War in America ended, Reverend Witherspoon made a return trip to Scotland for a visit. And while he was there, he connected with his former parishioner, Isabella, and was so impressed by the success of her growing educational institutions, by this time she had opened multiple schools, he urged her to move to the newly formed United States and set up a similar school in New York City. Isabella agreed, and in 1789, she established her boarding school for young women in New York. And while the 1790s brought more women's educational opportunities to the United States, it also brought something else, a yellow fever epidemic that devastated city populations.

We've talked about this previously. Dolly Madison's first husband and baby son died of yellow fever during a previous outbreak. And this epidemic left a huge number of orphans and widows behind. Isabella knew the unique heartache of being a widow, and with the help of two of her close friends, she established the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children. This would soon after become the New York Orphan Asylum, allowing widowed parents to work while their children were safely cared for and properly educated. Under Isabella's leadership, the society assisted hundreds of needy widows and orphans in its first few years, changing the fortunes of those who were left destitute from the yellow fever epidemic. And the two women who helped her set up the New York Orphan Asylum, they were her dear friends, Elizabeth Anne Seton, and...

I established the first private orphanage in New York City. That's right. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, famed widow of Alexander Hamilton. The organization they began is still in operation today, and it's now known as the Graham Wyndham Home in Brooklyn. Historian Dorothy G. Becker wrote that Isabella Graham was one of the first women to move beyond the lady's sewing circle and into long-range institution building. And it was at Isabella's boarding school in New York that young Anna spent her formative. years. For the rest of her life, she would talk about her time there, and it was one of the most cherished periods of her life. Eventually, Anna left school and her grandparents' home on Long Island and moved back in with her father and his new wife. Judge John Sims had become the owner

of a large area of land in what was then referred to as the Northwest Territory, which was the area west of Pennsylvania that hugged the Great Lakes. And this had to have been a very interesting transition for Anna, as she had never met her stepmother and presumably hadn't been with her father for an extended amount of time in over a decade. There's only one record of him visiting her in New York after the Revolutionary War ended. Soon after joining her father, Anna left on a trip to visit her older sister Maria, who was married by this time and lived in Kentucky.

It was on this visit that she met a young soldier stationed at Fort Washington. By all accounts, it was a love at first sight for Anna and Officer William Henry Harrison. Using the excuse that she should stay with Maria for a while while her father was building a new house, Anna decided to extend her state in Kentucky. It was a very convenient explanation to remain in the area and get to know her new beau. John Sims and his wife, Susanna, came to visit a few months later, and when they learned about the serious relationship between Anna and William, he did not approve.

He forbid them to continue seeing each other. Marrying a military man who planned to live on the frontier was not the future, John Sims had in mind for his proper New York educated daughter. Whether it was Anna's feminist educational foundation or just the mighty power of love, Anna directly disobeyed her father and eloped with William Harrison in November of 1795. Waiting until her father went away on a trip, the two lovebirds quickly married at the Simms' home in North Bend, Ohio. When he returned,

John Sims was so angry that he confronted William and demanded to know how he planned to support his daughter. And William Harrison famously responded, By my sword and my own right arm, sir. It took some time,

but Anna's father finally accepted them as a couple and then eventually grew to deeply respect William. Judge John Sims would be a fierce campaigner for William and his political aspirations and eventually made William Harrison the sole executor of his will. And then William spent the first few years of their marriage at his military post in Fort Washington, and their first child was born there in 1796. Two years later, William resigned, and using money he had carefully saved during his military years, he purchased 169 acres of land in North Bend, Ohio, built a log cabin on the property.

It was there that the young Harrisons continued to expand their family and plan Williams' next adventure into politics. Anna got to work, too. She set up a school system for her children in that Ohio log cabin, and despite it being an area with few settlers, she invited children from all over the region to her home once a month for special educational experiences. So, yes, Anna Harrison set up her own homeschool co-op. Her instruction included things like reading and writing and biblical religious studies as well as Greek philosophy and Shakespeare, not exactly the subjects you would expect to be taught in a near empty corner

of rural Ohio in the 1790s. But Anna's strong educational foundations gave her a passion for making sure the next generation would receive every learning opportunity possible. And she was especially focused on this for young women. Despite numerous young ladies' academies and higher education institutions that began populating the East Coast to train women as teachers in the growing public school system, female education was still not seen as a priority, especially for those outside of the wealthy class. Anna Harrison, no doubt because of her background at the Isabella Graham School,

was operating well before her time, educating not just her own daughters, but any others who were willing to show up and learn. The married years of Anna and Williams' life were filled with raising and educating a total of 10 children and the successful building of William's political career. His appointments took him to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and eventually he was sworn in as the first governor of Indiana territory. So let's back up for a quick second. In this episode, we've mentioned the Northwest territory where Anna and William lived. Today, when we think of the Northwest, we think of like Washington and Oregon, right? But in the late 18th century, as the country began to spread westward

from the eastern seaboard, the northwest territory encompassed what would become the future states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. That was literally the northwest of the United States at the time. And this expansion began in seven, 1787 when Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, a goal they had been working towards for three years after the end of the Revolutionary War. The system provided an opportunity for areas west of the Ohio River to eventually gain statehood and laid out a three-step plan as to how this would happen. First, the Northwest Territory had a goal of becoming no less than three but no more than five states in the Union. And second,

Secondly, Congress would then appoint a governor, secretary, and three judges to become the leadership of each territory. Once the population of each area reached 5,000 free, full-age men, those citizens would then be given the opportunity to nominate and vote on the government for their region. And third, each state would adopt their own bill of rights that gave protections to its citizens, including a right to religious, freedom, educational access, and the assurance that slavery would be illegal. And this family would have a significant role in this westward expansion as her father was named a judge in the Ohio territory and her husband was named the governor of the Indiana territory. The Harrisons settled in the most western area of that land, building a brick home in Indiana that they called Grouseland.

Anna continued to act as an educator and also moved into the role of the hospitable political spouse that William needed. She was well known for her dedication to entertaining influential leaders from Washington, D.C. And on several occasions,

she hosted visits from Vice President Aaron Burr. As supportive as Anna was, while William continued his political schmoozing. She did have one rule that he was not to do any politicking or campaigning on Sundays. Instead, after attending their local Presbyterian church, Sundays at the Harrisons came with an open-door policy.

Anyone in the congregation was welcome at the Harrison home for Sunday dinner. There was always a seat at their table. By the 1830s, William Henry Harrison had become, become a very well-known key political figure and a senior leader in the new Whig party. The Whigs, if you remember, it's spelled WHIG, were a new political party. They were formed in the 1830s by those people who disagreed with Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party politics. In fact, it was the Whig Party who was the first political party in the United States to refer to themselves as conservative. And the years since Williams' retirement from the military, he had been well known for some of his military leadership in the War of 1812.

He had built up a very impressive resume of positions in politics. Of course, I mentioned he was the governor of Indiana. They eventually moved back to Ohio. They moved back to North Bend, Ohio, where Anna's father had built up a large amount of land there. Harrison was eventually elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served in the Ohio legislature. He was eventually elected to the United States Senate representing Ohio. And during that time, he ran for a bunch of other positions, some of which he lost and some of which he won.

From the end of the John Quincy Adams administration, his friends successfully lobbied for his appointment as the first U.S. minister to Grand Columbia, a conglomerate of territories in South America. Andrew Jackson's spoils system unfortunately lost him this appointment early on in his tenure, but this did not cut short his career in public service. William spent the better part of the 1830s delivering speeches for the wakes, advocating for their stances on various political issues, especially agricultural issues, which are very important in the region that he represented. And even after declaring his retirement, he continued to serve his local government on the court of clerks. All of this work resulted in him being a very well-known man in the area at the time.

And the Whigs were established a prominent member of their party was our old friend, always a candidate, never a president, Henry Clay. Clay suffered a few unsuccessful bids for the presidency, and the Whig Party could see the writing on the wall. They needed another popular figure to take their political agenda and run with it. And William Henry Harrison was their guy. Even though he had technically retired back to his old log cabin in Ohio to drink hard cider and enjoy his numerous grandchildren, his Whig Party allies convinced him to run for president and seize power away from the Democratic Party. William Henry Harrison first ran for president in 1836, and he lost. Jackson's right-hand man, Martin Van Buren, took the win, and Harrison had to wait until 1840 for his next shot.

By the time the next election cycle began, William had a clear direction on how he could win. In fact, William Henry Harrison revolutionized political campaigning techniques during his second run. Harrison and his campaigners began to repeat a slogan, and it's one you may be familiar with, Tippa Canoe and Tyler, too. The phrase gave a nod to one of Harrison's military victories and utilized the last name of his running mate, John Tyler. The slogan began to appear everywhere, not just in newspapers, but on pamphlets, artwork, collectibles, like pins and ribbons. So, rewinding just a little bit. to remind you of where this nickname Tippa Canoe came from.

Just before the war of 1812, while he was still the governor of Indiana Territory, William led a thousand soldiers into the Shawnee Village of Prophetstown in central Indiana. The indigenous landowners had organized an army of tribes in an attempt to keep out the flood of pioneers that were moving into their area. They created a tribal confederacy that was perceived to be a breach of a treaty, European settlers, and this led William Harrison to lead a military presence into the area. William and his troops were met with a white flag and a request for a temporary ceasefire so that the leaders of each party could sit down and discuss the matter. He agreed to set up camp with his men so talks could begin later in a week. In assured military maneuver, William instructed

his men not to get too comfortable. By dawn, the camp was under attack. by tribal warriors. Ultimately, William's forces were victorious. They lit fire to the Prophetstown village and the battle ended the organizing of a Native American confederacy. William Henry Harrison's success at the Battle of Tippecanoe spread far and wide

throughout the union. And so he began his presidential campaign by using the slogan Tipakanoe and Tyler 2, which reminded the people of his popular military victory and provided the masses with a way to rally around him as he ran for office. It really was the first time a candidate had actively used a memorable slogan to gain the attention of the electorate. We now expect this in almost every run for a major office in our country,

a tactic that can actually make or break somebody's desire to become elected. His slogan, Tippecano and Tyler, too, was the equivalent of Obama's Yes, Yes, We Can, or Trump's Make America Great Again. Every major election since 1840 has adopted the use of a slogan as part of its campaign plan. His revolutionary campaign tactics worked, and Harrison was elected. in a landslide victory, becoming the first official Whig Party president. But for Anna, this was not a win. When she heard that her husband was the victor, she wept heavily and said, I wish that my husband's friends had left him where he is, happy and content in retirement.

Perhaps Anna had an unknown foresight of what was to come. because a few months later, her status would go from First Lady to First Widow. William Henry Harrison at 68 was the oldest man to be elected president of the United States, and he held that title until the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Similarly, Anna was the oldest woman to become First Lady, a title that she kept until the 2020 election. when Dr. Jill Biden moved into the White House. When it was time to leave for the inauguration and move to Washington, D.C., 65-year-old Anna felt too sick to make the trip. She sent along her daughter-in-law, Jane Harrison, to take her place until she was well enough to travel.

But Jane didn't get much of a chance to serve as White House hostess either. In an act of, what was he thinking? William Henry Harrison decided to make the longest inauguration speech on record during the coldest part of winter in Washington, D.C. And maybe he was trying to assert his vitality, but he did it all without wearing a hat or a coat. Outgoing President Martin Van Buren muttered to his friends that Harrison does not seem to realize the vast importance of his elevation

He is tickled with the presidency as a young woman is with a new bonnet. But maybe a bonnet would have kept him warm while he read all 8,445 words of his inauguration speech. It was two hours long. He spent two hours listening to himself talk in the snow and the rain. There are no speeches that people want to listen to the last two hours. 8,445 words. If you think about that, like, typed, 12-point font, holds roughly 500 words. So think about, like, how many pages that is to write as your inauguration speech is very long, it's very noteworthy.

In a turn of events that then surprised nobody, William Henry Harrison got sick. His cold evolved into a bad case of pneumonia. and 31 days into his presidency, he died. Anna, who had finally recovered from her own illness, was packing up for the move to the White House when she allegedly received the news by letter. She was overwhelmed with grief. And seeing no point in doing so,

she declined to travel to Washington, D.C. for the state funeral, which officially made her the only living First Lady to never be at the White House. The body of William Henry Harrison was eventually brought home to North Bend, Ohio in May of 1841, and a local funeral was held for him. Congress voted to give Anna a surprise.

She was the first spouse to ever be widowed while her husband was president. And so they voted to give her a pension of $25,000, which is the equivalent of almost a million dollars in today's money. New President John Tyler decided to sweeten the pot, free postage for the rest of her life. And today, stamps and postage might not seem like that big of a thing, like people would generally not be jumping up and down about that. But in the mid-1800s, letter writing was the primary form of communication between people. It was more like the equivalent of getting free,

cell phone service for the rest of your life. That would be a huge perk, right? So this was viewed as a huge perk for Anna Harrison. And interestingly enough, that tradition still lives on today is called a franking privilege, which is related to a Latin word meaning free. For non-political male, all the surviving staff of a former president has to do is use a stamp with their name where the postage would go. We currently don't have any surviving. surviving spouses of former presidents, but if, for example, Jimmy Carter outlives Rosalind Carter, she would be given franking privileges for non-political mail. Anna wrote a sincere letter of thanks to John Tyler, but instead of sending it directly to him,

she had it printed in all of the major newspapers of the day. In it, she wrote, Dear sir, I have received with sentiments of deep emotion, the resolution, of the Senate and the House of Representatives, which you have done me the honor of forwarding relative to the decease of my lamented husband. I cannot sufficiently express the thanks I owe to the nation and its assembled representatives for their condolence, so feelingly expressed of my individual calamity and the national bereavement. But mingling my tears with the size of the many patriots of the land. Pray to heaven for the enduring happiness and prosperity of our beloved country. Perhaps having the letter distributed to the newspapers was Anna's way of letting

John Tyler know that she may be the former First Lady, but she was not going anywhere. Anna became deeply invested in politics and had open, strong objections to the Tyler administration. In her last years, she went to live on the estate of her son, John, who was the father to our 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, which means that Anna was the spouse of a president and the grandmother of a president. Anna used her congressional pension to pay off family debts and lived modestly. She continued to work with her local Presbyterian church to provide generously to poor individuals in the community. She died in February of 1864 and was laid to rest next to her husband in North Bend, Ohio. Anna is an often overlooked first lady because of her husband's short term and her absence from the White House, but she does hold a number of distinctions.

And she is the last first lady to have been born a British subject before the American Revolution. Thanks to her husband's fondness for standing in the cold. without a hat. She was the first, first lady to be widowed while holding the title. I'll see you again next time. If you'd like to submit a question, head to thepreamble.com slash podcast. We'd love to hear from you there. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at the preamble.com. It's free. Here is your personal invitation to join 350,000 people who still believe understanding is an act of hope. I'm your host and executive producer Sharon McMahon. If you enjoy, this show, please like, share, and subscribe these things help podcasters out so much.

Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. I'll see you again soon.