Anna Harrison

Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison (July 25, 1775 - February 25, 1864), wife of President William Henry Harrison and grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison, was nominally First Lady of the United States during her husband's one-month term in 1841, but she never entered the White House.

Anna was born at Flatbrookville, Walpack Township, Sussex County, New Jersey on July 25, 1775 to Judge John Cleves and Anna Tuthill Symmes of Long Island. 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 John was a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress and the Chairman of the Sussex County (NJ) Committee of Safety.

When she was thirteen years old, Anna went with her father and stepmother into the Ohio wilderness, where they settled at North Bend, Ohio. A few years later she met William Henry Harrison, then a young army officer stationed at nearby Fort Washington. They married on November 25, 1795 at North Bend. Although William was 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. The couple had six sons and four daughters: Elizabeth (1795), John Cleves (1798), Lucy (1800), William Henry, Jr. (1802), John Scott (1804), Benjamin (1806), Mary (1809), Carter Bassett (1811-1839), Anna Tuthill (1813), and James (died as an infant).

Harrison won fame as an Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, but 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.

Facing war in 1812, the family moved to the farm at North Bend. There, upon hearing 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 William was inaugurated in 1841, Anna was detained by illness at their home in North Bend. She decided not to accompany him to Washington. President-elect Harrison 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, the President Harrison died. Anna was packing for the move to the White House when she learned of William's death in Washington, so she never made the journey.

Following William's death she lived with her son (John Scott Harrison) in North Bend, and helped raise his children, including eight year old Benjamin who later became President of the United States. She died at the age of 88, on February 25, 1864 at home in North Bend, Ohio.

Anna Harrison was buried at the William Henry Harrison Tomb State Memorial in North Bend.

References

*"Original text based on [http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/ah9.html White House biography] "