Our First Ladies #14

 

                                                       Abigail Powers Fillmore

Abigail was born in Stillwater, New York, 1798. She was the youngest of seven children born to Reverend Lemuel Leland Powers, a Baptist minister. Her father died shortly after her birth. Her mother moved the family westward, thinking her scanty funds would go further in a less settled region, and ably educated her small son and daughter beyond the usual frontier level with the help of her late husband's library.

After moving to Cayuga County, New York, by wagon train, they moved in with Cyprus Powers because of their impoverished state. Her father left behind a large library of his personal books, and she was educated by her mother from this wealth of books. She came to love literature and became proficient in other subjects such as math, government, history, philosophy, and geography.  After finishing school she became a teacher. 

In 1814 Abigail became a part-time schoolteacher at the Sempronius Village school. In 1817 she became a full-time teacher and in 1819 she took on another teaching job and began to teach at the private New Hope Academy. Then, in 1824 she became a private tutor in Lisle to three of her cousins. She was then asked to open a private school in Broome County, she opened the school, and in 1825, went back to Sempronius to teach in her original position.

In 1819, she took a teaching post at the new academy in New Hope, where her oldest pupil was 19-year-old Millard Fillmore. The world of knowledge and Fillmore's steady progress in it drew them together, and gradually the relationship of teacher and student evolved into romantic attachment.

After a long courtship, Millard, aged 26, and Abigail, aged 27, were married on February 5, 1826.  Without a honeymoon, they settled at East Aurora, New York. Mrs. Fillmore continued to teach school until the birth of her first child and maintained a lifelong interest in education. She shared her husband's love of books and helped build their personal library.

They had two children, a son and a daughter.

Millard Fillmore won election to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 1833. He served four terms in Congress. In 1848, he because Vice President under Zachary Taylor and Abigail became the second lady of the United States. Taylor died suddenly in mid-1850 and Fillmore seceded him, becoming the nation’s 13^th president (1850-1853).

When Abigail first moved into the White House, she was reportedly appalled at the fact that there was no library in it. With a special appropriation of $2,000 from Congress, she spent contented hours selecting books for a White House library. In the library was Shakespeare, history and geography books, and her piano, which she had taught herself to play. She invited writers such as William Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and Washington Irving, to meet with her and performance artists like Jenny Lind, essentially creating a White House literary salon. "She was reportedly a witty and even erudite conversationalist, the most intellectual of the early first ladies.

When her husband was away, he missed her and wrote her letters about politics, and she would write back offering him advice and counsel on political matters. In fact, he valued her opinion so much that he reportedly never made any important decision without first consulting her. Some history suggests that Abigail advised her husband not to sign the Fugitive Slave Act, which he did in the end sign, losing his nomination for a second term as Abigail predicted would happen if he signed the Act.

As First Lady, Abigail Fillmore left a legacy of women and work. As First Lady, the public was aware that she was educated and had worked as a teacher. They also knew about the library she created, and that teaching is an honorable profession. Abigail paved the way for future women and future first ladies to receive an education and become teachers.

 At the outdoor inaugural ceremonies for Franklin Pierce in 1853, she caught a cold and the next day came down with a fever, which turned into bronchitis and then developed into pneumonia. At age 55 Abigail died just 26 days after leaving the White House, on March 30, 1853, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., the shortest post-presidential life of any former first lady. Her sudden and quick death became the most widely reported death of a first lady. She was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York. 

 

 The memorial stone was placed by the Abigail Fillmore Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, of Buffalo.