Julia Tyler was an american first lady and second wife of the President of the United States John Tyler. Accustomed to the life of a debutante in New York, Julia made these social occasions formal affairs. She also actively defended the political positions she and her husband shared.
Background
Julia Gardiner Tyler was born to a prominent New York family on May 4, 1820. Her father, David Gardiner, as a lawyer and state senator, and her mother, Juliana McLachlan, was an heiress to the fortune of a Scottish brewer. The Gardiners owned an island home in Long Island Sound that had been in the family since 1639, when adventurer Lion Gardiner purchased it from Native Americans of the Algonquin tribe.
Education
Julia was raised primarily at her family’s estate in East blainpton, where she received private tutoring, and later amended a private school in Manhattan. As a pretty and wealthy young debutante, she had a coming-out party and Joined New York society, where she was affectionately known as "the Rose of Long Island."
Julia traveled with her parents on a European tour that included study, sightseeing, and meetings and dinners with various heads of state. Her family arranged the tour, according to some sources, after Julia had appeared as a model in a newspaper advertisement for a department store. Such public displays were considered unbecoming and upper-class New York social circles of the time.
Career
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. Although her husband was often visibly fatigued, his youthful wife thoroughly enjoyed the duties of First Lady. 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 Childress Polk did likewise. In the last month of the Tyler administration, she hosted a grand White House ball for 3,000 guests.
The Tylers retired to Sherwood Forest, where they lived tranquilly until the Civil War.
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 orator and writer, authored her first published work, a letter to the New York Tribune in 1853.
After her husband's death in 1862, she lost her 60 slaves and 1100 acres of land due to military events. Julia moved north to Staten Island with several of her children, although family relations were so strained that her brother David Gardiner refused to travel to Virginia to escort her to New York and eventually moved out of his mother's house, where Julia had settled. She resided at the Gardiner-Tyler House from 1868 to 1874. 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".
The depression that followed the Panic of 1873 depleted her finances. She returned to Virginia to live with the aid of her grown children. She lobbied Congress for a pension and was granted a monthly allowance in 1880. Following the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881, Congress granted an annual pension of $5000 to widows of former presidents.
Achievements
Religion
She converted to Roman Catholicism and was re-baptized in May 1872.
Connections
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 hated that and hated 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 a number of 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.
On June 26, 1844, the President slipped into New York City, where the nuptials were performed by the Right Reverend Benjamin Treadwell Onderdonk, fourth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, at the Church of the Ascension, not too far from the Gardiner's residence on LaGrange Terrace.
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.
The bride's sister, Margaret, and brother, Alexander, were bridesmaid and best man. Only the President's son, John Tyler III, represented the groom's family. Tyler was so concerned about maintaining secrecy that he did not confide his plans to the rest of his children. Although his sons readily accepted the sudden union, the Tyler daughters were shocked and hurt. The news was then broken to the American people, who greeted it with keen interest, much publicity, and some criticism about the couple's 30-year difference in age. 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.
Between 1846 and 1860, Julia and John had seven children together.
John Tyler, the Accidental President
The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." In this biography of the tenth president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency.