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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
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Bio
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter promised a government “as competent, as compassionate, as good” as the American people. His achievements were notable, but in an era of rising energy costs, mounting inflation, and increasing world crises, he found it difficult to meet Americans’ high expectations.James Earl Carter Jr. was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. Peanut farming, talk of politics, and the Baptist
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Bio
Abigail Adams
Abigail Smith was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1744. Her parents, Reverend William Smith and Elizabeth Smith, provided her with some instruction but she did not receive a formal education.1 On October 25, 1764, Abigail married John Adams, and the newlywed couple moved into his family home in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. They had six children together but only four reached adulthood – Ab
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Bio
John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot to death as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president; he was the youngest to die. Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, son of financier Joseph Kennedy and his wife Rose, on May 29, 1917. Grad