Anna Tuthill Harrison was
the wife of President William Henry Harrison and grandmother of President
Benjamin Harrison, and was nominally first lady of the United States during her
husband's one-month term in 1841, though she never entered the White House due
to the fact that he died exactly one month after the inauguration. The couple had been
married 45 years when he was elected President and she had borne him five children.
At the time she was too ill to travel when her husband set out from Ohio in 1841
for his inauguration, it was a long trip and a difficult one even by steamboat and
railroad, with February weather uncertain at best and she at 65 was well acquainted
with the rigors of frontier journeys as he was a decorated soldier. So, it was
decided that his daughter-in-law would accompany him and serve until May when
she planned to make the trip. She was packing when she received word of his
death and never went. Accepting grief with admirable dignity, she stayed at her
home in North Bend until the house burned in 1858; she lived nearby with her
last surviving child, John Scott Harrison, until she died in February 1864 at
the age of 88.
