Eliza Johnson was an american first lady and the wife of the president of the United States, Andrew Johnson. Eliza was always looking for ways to improve herself. She helped improve Andrew Johnson, too, by tutoring him to expand on his meager reading, writing, and math skills.
Background
Eliza was born on October 4, 1810, in Leesburg, Tennessee, the only child of Sarah and John McCardle, a shoemaker. Like Andrew Johnson’s father, John died when his child was very young, and Elizas mother supported the family by sewing quilts. Eliza had some schooling at the local Rhea Academy, but her future husband, the son of poverty-stricken parents, had none and was apprenticed to a tailor when he was only ten years old.
It was a lucky day when young Andrew moved to Greeneville, Tennessee. He not only met Eliza that day, but he was told that the town’s only tailor had recently left town, which was his opportunity to open a new shop and go into business. He and Eliza lived in back of the shop building after they were married in 1827 - when she was sixteen years old, the youngest bride of any first lady. Eliza helped teach Andrew to read and write and to do arithmetic while the shop of A. Johnson, Tailor, was becoming a favorite meeting place for neighbors who gathered to discuss politics. Johnson’s views impressed them, and he was elected to the Greeneville town council at the age of twenty.
Career
By the time Johnson assumed the office of president after Lincoln’s assassination in April of 1865, Eliza had become an invalid by then, suffering from tuberculosis. In those days, remaining indoors was considered the best treatment for the disease, and Eliza chose a room on the second floor of the executive mansion as the center for family activities and rarely left it. She read, sewed, and spent time there with her children and grandchildren.
Andrew and Eliza Johnson shared their living quarters with their sons Robert and Andrew, their widowed daughter Mary and her two children, and their daughter Martha and her three children. The Johnson’s son Charles had died fighting in the Civil War, as had Mary’s husband, both serving on the side of the Union.
Eliza Johnson was seen publicly during only two presidential social functions. She attended a reception for Queen Emma of Hawaii in 1866, and two years later she served as hostess for a Children’s Ball. The mansion was filled with children dancing and playing on that day, which happened to be her husband’s sixtieth birthday.
The Johnson presidential years were a time of trial as he battled with Congress almost continuously, beginning in 1865 and not ending until his impeachment trial three years later. After Johnson survived his impeachment ordeal in mid-May of 1868, the gloomy atmosphere of the White House lightened somewhat. More receptions and parties were held during the last nine months of his term, with the Johnson’s eldest daughter, Martha Johnson Patterson, the wife of Tennessee Senator David C. Patterson, serving as hostess.
Martha’s other duties involved overseeing the restoration of the executive mansion. Many of its furnishings and even the walls themselves had been trashed by souvenir hunters after President Lincoln’s assassination. Martha had visited the mansion in her late teens as a guest of President James K. Polk and his wife, Sarah, who, like the Johnsons, were from Tennessee.
Martha and her mother were both happy to leave Washington in 1869 for a quieter life in Tennessee.
Views
Quotations:
“I knew he’d be acquitted; I knew it. ”