Julia Gardiner Tyler 1820-1889
Julia Gardiner Tyler was
born in 1820 to Juliana and David Gardiner, a landowner, and New York State
Senator. (1824 to 1828). She was raised in the town of East Hampton and
educated at the Chegary Institute in New York. In 1839, she shocked polite
society by appearing, posed with an unidentified man, and identified as
"The Rose of Long Island", in a newspaper advertisement for a middle-class
department store. Her family took her to Europe to avoid further publicity and
allow her notoriety to subside, but she was indeed a beauty.
On January 20, 1842, the
21-year-old Julia was introduced to President John
Tyler at a White House reception. After
the death of his first wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, on September 10, 1842,
Tyler made it clear that he wished to get involved with Julia. Initially, the
high-spirited and independent-minded northern beauty felt little attraction to
the grave, reserved Virginia gentleman, who was thirty years her senior. He
first proposed to her on February 22, 1843, when she was 22, at a White House
Masquerade Ball. She refused that and later proposals he made. The increased
time spent together prompted public speculation about their relationship.
Julia, her sister
Margaret, and her father joined a Presidential excursion on the new steam
frigate Princeton. During this excursion,
her father, David Gardiner, along with others, lost his life in the explosion
of a huge naval gun called the Peacemaker. Julia was devastated by
the death of her adored father. She spoke often in later years of how the
President's quiet strength sustained her during this difficult time. Tyler
comforted Julia in her grief and won her consent to a secret engagement,
proposing in 1844 at the George Washington Ball.
After a wedding trip
to Philadelphia, a White House reception, and a stay at Sherwood Forest, an
estate the president had recently acquired for his retirement, the newlyweds
returned to Washington D.C.. Although her husband was often visibly
fatigued, his youthful wife thoroughly enjoyed the duties of First Lady.
President Tyler was 54
years old, while Julia was just 24. Tyler's oldest daughter, Mary, was 5 years
older than her father's new wife. The marriage made Julia the first (First
Lady) to marry a President who was already in office at the time of the wedding.
It was awkward for the
eldest Tyler daughter, Mary, to adjust to a new stepmother five years
younger than herself. One daughter, Letitia, never made peace with her
stepmother.
The anthem "Hail to
the Chief" had been played at a number of events associated with the
arrival or presence of the President of the United States before Julia Tyler
became First Lady, but she ordered its regular use to announce the arrival of
the President. It became established practice when her successor, Sarah Polk did likewise. It is
still practiced today.
The first lady was known
as a wonderful hostess and the President was delighted with all the compliments
she received. When the President’s term was finished, they retired to The
Sherwood Forest Plantation.
All though a northerner
by birth, Mrs. Tyler soon grew accustomed to the leisurely routines of daily
life as the wife of a wealthy plantation owner, and between 1846 and 1860,
Julia and John had seven children together.
Julia wrote a defense of
slavery titled "The Women of England vs. the Women of America",
in response to the "Stafford House Address" petition against
slavery which the Duchess
of Sutherland had helped to organize.
In response to Julia
Tyler's essay, Harriet
Jacobs, a former slave and later abolitionist writer, authored her
first published work, a letter to the New
York Tribune in 1853.
After her husband's death
in 1862, lost her 60 slaves and 1,100 acres of land due to military
events. Julia moved north to Staten Island with several of her
children and family relations were so strained that her brother David moved out
of his mother's house, where Julia had settled.
Her home there was almost
burned down by enraged Union veterans when it was discovered she was flying
a Confederate
flag on the property. She resided at the Gardiner-Tyler House from 1868-74.
In 1865, her brother
David sued to prevent her from inheriting the bulk of their mother's estate
valued at $180,000, charging that Julia Tyler had exerted "undue
influences" on their mother to execute a will despite her "mental
incapacity". The
court supported his claim on August 25 and refused to accept the will. After
two appeals, David Gardiner won the case in 1867. David
then asked the courts to partition the estate as if no will existed. Julia
asked for a jury trial on the issue, and the jury declined to consider the
contested will as an argument in her favor. The New
York Times thought Julia was treated unfairly and that the dispute
could be traced to "the political antagonisms of the rebellion, which have
divide many a household besides that of Mrs. Gardiner". She died in 1889
and is buried next to her husband in Virginia.
