Existing comment:
Caroline Harrison (1832–1892)
Born Oxford, Ohio
First Lady 1889-1892
Caroline Lavinia Scott held a degree in music and taught at the college level before marrying Benjamin Henry Harrison in 1853. Raised in a resolutely anti-slavery household, Harrison participated in the Ladies' Sanitary Committee, which helped to care for wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War. In the White House, she established the presidential china collection and initiated a mass restoration of the presidential mansion, which included installing electricity. Before her untimely death, Harrison helped raise money for the establishment of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on the condition that the school admit women students.
This grand portrait of Harrison by Daniel Huntington was a gift to the White House from the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Harrison was a founder of that organization and its first president general. In that role, she became the first wife of a sitting president to deliver a public speech.
Daniel Huntington (1816–1906)
Oil on canvas, 1894
The White House |