Pat Nixon (1912 - 1993)

Thelma Catherine Ryan was born in the small mining town of Ely, Nevada, the day before Saint Patrick’s Day. Her father, William M. Ryan Sr., was a sailor, gold miner, and truck farmer of Irish descent; her mother, Katherine Halberstadt, was a German immigrant. “Pat” was a nickname given to her by her father, referring […]

Elizabeth Monroe (1768 - 1830)

Elizabeth Monroe Born in New York in 1768, Elizabeth was the daughter of Lawrence Kortright and Hannah Aspinwall, 6th generation of Dutch Flanders origins. Lawrence Kortright the eldest son of Cornelius Kortright, also a merchant. During the French Indian wars, he became wealthy and prominent. He was part owner of several privateers fitted out at […]

Ida Saxton McKinley (1847 - 1970)

Ida was born in Canton, Ohio, the elder daughter of James Saxton, prominent Canton banker, and Katherine DeWalt. Her grandfather, John Saxton, in 1815 founded The Repository, the city’s first and now its only newspaper. A graduate of Brook Hall Seminary, a finishing school in Media, Pennsylvania, Ida was refined, charming, and strikingly attractive when […]

Dolley Madison (1768 - 1849)

The first girl in her family, Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, in the Quaker settlement of New Garden, North Carolina, in Guilford County to John Payne Jr. and Mary Coles Payne. Her parents, both Virginians, had moved there in 1765. Her mother, Mary Coles, a Quaker, had married John Payne, a non-Quaker, […]

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818 - 1882)

Mary Todd Lincoln Mary Todd Lincoln was born in Lexington, in Kentucky as the fourth of seven children of Robert Smith Todd, a banker, and Elizabeth (Parker) Todd. Her family were slaveholders, and Mary was raised in comfort and refinement. When Mary was six, her mother died. Two years later, her father married Elizabeth “Betsy” […]

Jacqueline Kennedy (1929 - 1994)

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born in Southampton, New York in 1929, to Wall Street stockbroker John Vernou “Black Jack” Bouvier III (1891–1957) and Janet Norton Lee (1907–1989). Jackie’s younger sister Caroline Lee Bouvier was born in 1933. The Bouviers divorced in 1940. Janet later married Standard Oil heir Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr. in 1942 and […]

Harriet Lane Johnston (1830 - 1903)

Harriet Lane’s family was from Franklin County, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest child of Elliott Tole Lane, a merchant, and Jane Ann Buchanan Lane. She lost her mother when she was 9; when her father’s death 2 years later made her an orphan, she requested that her favorite uncle, James Buchanan, be appointed her legal […]

Eliza Johnson (1810 - 1876)

Born at Telford, Tennessee, the only child of John McCardle, a shoemaker, and Sarah Phillips-McCardle, Eliza lost her father when she was still a small child. She was raised by her widowed mother in Greeneville, Tennessee. One day in September 1826, Eliza was chatting with classmates from Rhea Academy when she spotted Andrew Johnson and […]

Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson (1912 - 2007)

Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas, a town in Harrison County, near the state’s border with Louisiana. Her birthplace was “The Brick House,” an antebellum plantation mansion on the outskirts of town, which her father had purchased shortly before her birth. Nearly all of her maternal and paternal forebears had arrived in the […]

Rachel Jackson (1767 - 1828)

Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson, born Rachel Donelson, (June 15, 1767 – December 22, 1828) was the wife of Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States. She lived with him at their home at The Hermitage, but died before his inauguration in 1829, and therefore was never First Lady. Rachel Donelson was born near […]

Lou Henry Hoover (1874 - 1944)

Lou Henry Hoover Lou Henry was born in Waterloo, Iowa, to banker Charles Delano Henry and Florence Ida Weed. Lou grew up something of a tomboy in Waterloo, as well as Whittier, California, and Monterey, California. Charles Henry took his daughter on camping trips in the hills—her greatest pleasures in her early teens.  Lou became […]

Lucy Webb Hayes (1831 - 1889)

Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, the daughter of James Webb, a doctor, and Maria Cook-Webb, Lucy was descended from seven veterans of the American Revolution. Her father died when she was a child. With her mother, she moved to Delaware, Ohio where in 1847 she met Rutherford B. Hayes. Later that year, she enrolled at Wesleyan […]

Anna Harrison (1775 - 1864)

Anna was born at her father’s estate Solitude, just outside Morristown, New Jersey (present day Wheatsheaf Farms subdivision off Sussex Avenue in Morris Township, New Jersey) on July 25, 1775, to Judge John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill Symmes of Long Island. Her father was a Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and […]

Florence Harding (1860 - 1924)

She was born Florence Kling in Marion, Ohio, the eldest of three children of Amos Kling, a prominent Marion banker of German descent, and Louisa Bouton Kling, whose French Huguenot ancestors had fled religious persecution.  Aiming to become a concert pianist, Florence began studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but at 19 she eloped […]

Julia Grant (1826 - 1902)

Julia Boggs Dent was born at White Haven plantation west of St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Colonel Frederick Dent, a slaveholding planter and merchant, and Ellen Wrenshall-Dent, Julia squinted through crossed eyes. In memoirs prepared late in life—unpublished until 1975—she pictured her girlhood as an idyll: “one long summer of sunshine, flowers, and smiles”. […]

Lucretia Garfield (1832 - 1918)

Born in Hiram, Ohio, the daughter of Zeb Rudolph, a farmer and co-founder of the Eclectic Institute at Hiram, and Arabella Mason-Rudolph, Lucretia “Crete” Rudolph was a devout member of the Churches of Christ. Her ancestry includes German, Welsh, English and Irish; Lucretia Garfield’s paternal great-grandfather immigrated to Pennsylvania (in a part that is now […]

Abigail Fillmore (1798 - 1853)

Abigail Powers Fillmore (March 13, 1798 – March 30, 1853), wife of Millard Fillmore, was First Lady of the United States from 1850 to 1853.  Abigail was born in Stillwater, New York, 1798, in Saratoga County, New York. She was the daughter of the Reverend Lemuel Powers, a Baptist minister, and Abigail Newland-Powers, Abigail grew […]

Persis Foster Eames Albee (1836 - 1914)

She was known as the “First Avon Lady”. In 1886 became the first saleswoman for the California Perfume Company, a business that eventually became the multi-billion dollar Avon Products, Incorporated. She started selling the company’s products in 1886 door-to-door, and rose to become the chief of sales for the business. It was her idea to […]

Yoshisuke Aikawa (1880 - 1967)

Aikawa was born in what is now part of Yamaguchi city, Yamaguchi prefecture. His mother was the niece of Meiji period genrō Inoue Kaoru. He graduated from the engineering department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1903 and went to work for Shibaura Seisakusho, the forerunner of Toshiba. Although his pay was very low, Aikawa managed […]

Giovanni Angelli (1921 - 2003)

Agnelli was born in Turin but he maintained a strong ties with the village of Villar Perosa, near Turin in the Piedmont region. His father was the prominent Italian industrialist Edoardo Agnelli and his mother was Virginia Bourbon del Monte, daughter of Carlo, 4th Principe di San Faustino, head of a noble family established in […]

Carl W Ackerman (1890 - 1970)

Carl W. Ackerman Carl William Ackerman (January 16, 1890 Richmond, Indiana –October 9, 1970 New York City) was an American journalist, author and educational administrator, the first dean of the Columbia School of Journalism. As a correspondent with the Public Ledger of Philadelphia, in 1919 he published the first excerpts in an English translation of […]

Edith Abbott (1876 - 1957)

Edith Abbott Born September 25, 1876 in Grand Island, Nebraska, Edith was the daughter of Otheman Abbott and Elizabeth Griffin. In 1893, Abbott graduated from Brownell Hall, a girls’ boarding school in Omaha. However, her family could not afford to send her to college, so she began teaching high school in Grand Island. She took […]

Mamie Eisenhower (1896 - 1979)

Born in Boone, Iowa and named, in part, after the popular song Lovely Lake Geneva, Mamie Geneva Doud was the second child born to John Sheldon Doud, a meatpacking executive, and his wife, the former Elivera Mathilde Carlson. She grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Denver, Colorado, and the Doud winter home […]

Grace Anna Coolidge (1879 - 1957)

Born in Burlington, Vermont, the only child of Andrew Issaclar Goodhue (1848–1923), a mechanical engineer and steamboat inspector, and Lemira Barrett Goodhue (1849–1929), Grace graduated from the University of Vermont in 1902, where she was a founding member of the Beta chapter of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She then joined the faculty of the Clarke […]

Frances Folsom Cleveland (1864 - 1947)

Frances Clara Folsom was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Oscar Folsom, a lawyer and descendant of the earliest settlers of Exeter, New Hampshire, and Emma Harmon. All of Frances Cleveland’s ancestors were from England and settled in what would become Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, eventually migrating to western New York. […]

Ellen Arthur (1837 - 1880)

Ellen Lewis Herndon, called “Nell,” was born in Culpeper Court House, Virginia, the daughter of William Lewis Herndon and Frances Elizabeth Hansborough.  Her father was a naval officer who gained national renown in 1857 when he went down with his ship, the mail steamer SS Central America, along with more than 400 passengers and crew. […]

Louisa Catherine Adams (1775 - 1852)

Born Louisa Catherine Johnson on February 12, 1775, in London, she was the daughter of Catherine Nuth Johnson, an Englishwoman and Joshua Johnson, an American merchant whose brother Thomas Johnson later served as Governor of Maryland and United States Supreme Court Justice. Joshua Johnson was originally from Maryland. She had six sisters: Ann, Caroline, Harriet, […]

Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)

Abigail Adams was born at the North Parish Congregational Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to The Reverend William Smith (1707-1783) and Elizabeth (née Quincy) Smith. On her mother’s side she was descended from the Quincy family, a well-known political family in the Massachusetts colony. Through her mother she was a cousin of Dorothy Quincy, wife of […]

James Francis Byrnes (1882 - 1972)

James Francis “Jimmy” Byrnes was born at 538 King St. in Charleston, South Carolina and reared in Charleston, South Carolina. Byrnes’s father died shortly after Byrnes was born. His mother, Elizabeth McSweeney Byrnes, was an Irish-American dressmaker. At the age of fourteen, he left St. Patrick’s Catholic School to work in a law office, and […]

Pierce Butler (1866 - 1939)

Butler was born to Patrick and Mary Ann Butler, Catholic immigrants from County Wicklow, Ireland. (The pair met in Galena, Illinois, after having left the same part of Ireland because of the Irish Potato Famine.) Soon, the couple settled in Sciota, then Waterford, Dakota County, Minnesota. Their son Pierce Butler was the sixth of nine […]