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Bio
Elizabeth Truman
Elizabeth Wallace, better known as Bess, was born to David and Madge Wallace on February 13, 1885, in Independence, Missouri.1 Bess was a bright young woman who excelled in sports. After graduating from Independence High School, she attended finishing school at the Barstow School in Kansas City.2 At the age of five, she met Harry S. Truman at Sunday school at the
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Bio
Harry S. Truman
During his few weeks as vice president, Harry S. Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman’s when, on April 12, 1945, he became president when Roosevelt died. He told reporters, “I felt like the moon
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Bio
Lou Hoover
Lou Henry was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on March 29, 1874, to parents Charles and Florence Weed Henry.1 Lou and her family moved around before eventually settling in Monterey, California.2 As a young girl, Lou spent a lot of time in the wilderness with her father and developed a love for the outdoors. After high school she attended the Los Angeles Normal
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Bio
Herbert Hoover
Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the presidency a luminous reputation as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian. Born in West Branch, Iowa on August 10, 1874, Hoover grew up in Newberg, Oregon with his uncle after the deaths of his parents.He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a
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Bio
Lucretia Garfield
Lucretia “Crete” Rudolph was born to parents Zeb and Arabella Rudolph in Garrettsville, Ohio, on April 19, 1832.1 Crete excelled academically from a young age, attending Geauga Seminary, followed by Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) to further her studies. After commencement, she worked as a teacher in Ohio.2 On November 11, 1858, Lucretia married her former classmate, James A. Garfield, and together, they
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Bio
James A. Garfield
As the last of the log cabin presidents, James A. Garfield attacked political corruption and won back for the presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction period. He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on November 19, 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He graduated from Williams
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Bio
Harriet Lane
Born to parents Elliott T. Lane and Jane Buchanan Lane on May 9, 1830, in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, Harriet Lane lost both of her parents by eleven. Jane’s brother, then-Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, became Harriet’s legal guardian. Harriet attended boarding school, first in Pennsylvania and later in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and lived with her uncle at his Wheatland esta
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Bio
James Buchanan
Tall, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only president who never married. Presiding over a rapidly dividing nation, Buchanan did not quite grasp the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional
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Bio
Sarah Polk
Sarah Childress was born to Joel and Elizabeth Childress on September 4, 1803, in Tennessee.1 Her father was a wealthy plantation owner, which led to a privileged upbringing for Sarah and her siblings. She was well educated, studying at Abercrombie’s Boarding School in Nashville and the Moravian Female Academy in Salem, North Carolina.2 Sarah’s father was involved in Tennessee politics and
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Bio
Dolley Madison
Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, the third of Mary Coles and John Payne Jr.’s nine children.1 Dolley was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, where her parents briefly moved to establish a Quaker community before returning to Virginia. Although John Payne owned enslaved people during Dolley’s early childhood, he freed them in 1783. It is unknown where Dolley was
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Bio
Elizabeth Monroe
Elizabeth Kortright was born in New York on June 30, 1768, daughter of an old New York family. Her father, Lawrence, served the Crown privateering during the French and Indian War and made a fortune. He took no active part in the War of Independence; and James Monroe wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson in Paris in 1786 that he had married the
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Bio
Rose Cleveland
Rose Cleveland was “a woman of unusual gifts, of large and varied information, of vigorous views and strong convictions.”1 Born in New York in 1846, she was the youngest of Richard and Ann Cleveland’s nine children and the sister of future President Grover Cleveland, who was nine years her senior. Miss Cleveland attended school at Houghton Seminary, taught in Pennsylvania and Ne