Existing comment:
Anna Harrison (1775–1864)
Born Morristown, New Jersey
First Lady 1841
In 1794, nineteen-year-old Anna Tuthill Symmes and her family abandoned the comfort of the East Coast to resettle in the wilderness of Ohio, then part of the Northwest Territory. There, she met William Henry Harrison, an Army officer stationed at Fort Washington. The Harrisons had ten children, and such frequent childbearing left Anna Harrison in delicate health most of the time. In 1841, she was at home in Indiana mourning the loss of an adult son and recuperating from an illness when her husband, then president, became ill and died after just thirty days in office.
This portrait shows Anna Harrison in a simple black mourning dress, alluding to a life that was marked by the repeated loss of her children. Her hair is tied up beneath a spectacularly intricate lace cap rather than a black hair covering or veil, so we can infer that she was not in recent mourning.
Unidentified artist
Oil on canvas, c. 1820
The White House |