page_title: Julia Gardiner Tyler
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Julia Gardiner Tyler / First Lady of the United States / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: John Tyler, Sherwood Forest, residence in Virginia. Exterior.
context_page_description: Julia Tyler was the second wife of John Tyler, who was the tenth President of the United States. As such, she served as the First Lady of the United States from June 26, 1844, to March 4, 1845.
context_section_description: The Tylers retired to Sherwood Forest, where they lived tranquilly until the Civil War.  Although a northerner by birth, Mrs. Tyler soon grew accustomed to the leisurely routines of daily life as the wife of a wealthy plantation owner.
  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 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 1,100 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. Her home there was almost burned down by enraged Union veterans when it was discovered that she was flying a Confederate flag on the property. 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".
  She converted to Roman Catholicism and was conditionally baptized in May 1872. 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 $5,000 to widows of former presidents.
  Her residence is listed as Williams Landing in Hamilton County, Tennessee on page 342 of the 'List of Pensioners on the Roll, January 1, 1883' where she is shown as receiving $416.66 per month as a widow.  (https://archive.org/details/listpensionerso02buregoog/page/n348/mode/2up).
caption: Sherwood Forest Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, in which the Tylers lived after leaving the White House.
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