Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, wife of President William Henry Harrison and grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison, was First Lady during her husband’s one-month term in 1841, holding the title for the shortest length of time. She was the first First Lady to be widowed while holding the title. As a girl of 19, bringing pretty clothes and dainty manners, she went out to Ohio with her father, Judge John Cleves Symmes, who had taken up land for settlement on the “north bend” of the Ohio River. She had grown up a young lady of the East, completing her education at a boarding school in New York City.
Judge John Cleves Symmes,
Judge John Cleves Symmes,