First Ladies Who Weren't Wives, Part One: The Niece Will Have To Do
Update: 2025-01-30
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For more than two hundred years, the American public has elected not just a president, but a family. While the position of First Lady of the United States is not outlined in the Constitution, you literally cannot be the President without someone at your side. As a result, the position of FLOTUS wields immense, subtle power -- often in ways the public does not understand. In the first part of this continuing series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the intricate, bizarre -- dare we say, ridiculous -- stories of people who quietly saved the world while a president took credit.
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Transcript
00:00:00
"Radiculous History" is a production of "I Heart" radio.
00:00:02
Welcome back to the show.
00:00:27
"Radiculous Historians" thank you so much as always for tuning in.
00:00:31
That's the first gentleman of our podcast, our super producer, Mr.
00:00:36
Max Williams.
00:00:37
I've actually always dreamed of being a house husband.
00:00:42
Oh yeah, that's a posh gang right there.
00:00:45
In late-stage capitalism, are you kidding?
00:00:48
What are we doing here, you guys?
00:00:49
I am Ben Bullard.
00:00:51
That's Mr.
00:00:52
Noel Brown.
00:00:53
Hello.
00:00:59
Hello, sir.
00:00:59
We are talking about something that was in the news again, quite recently.
00:01:01
The historical concept here in the United States of something called the First Lady.
00:01:09
So, every K.A.
00:01:11
Flotus.
00:01:12
Yes, Flotus and Potus.
00:01:15
What a power couple.
00:01:16
So, historically speaking, every single US president so far, has had a person close to them assuming the role of First Lady,
00:01:29
generally most of the time, especially in recent years, the First Lady of the United States or Flotus, as you pointed out, has been the spouse of the current president,
00:01:41
but that was not always the case.
00:01:44
That's right, and just really quickly, I just thought it might be worth mentioning for anyone who oversees or anyone here in the United States who maybe isn't up on this kind of stuff.
00:01:52
What does the First Lady do, exactly?
00:01:55
It can mean lots of things.
00:01:57
There are often charity events and things and causes that various First Lady throughout history have sort of taken on.
00:02:05
There is the role of essentially being a presidential liaison of sorts.
00:02:10
Oftentimes, they interface and interact with kids and education a lot, but it is kind of an amorphous role and depending on the First Lady can be a lot of different things,
00:02:23
right?
00:02:23
Yeah, absolutely, because First Ladies don't always have to be spouses.
00:02:29
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00:03:34
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00:03:34
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00:03:36
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00:03:37
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00:03:39
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00:03:41
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00:03:42
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00:04:07
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00:04:10
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00:04:40
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00:04:44
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00:05:00
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00:05:02
There can be daughters, sisters, nieces, and as we'll see in later explorations,
00:05:13
it goes pretty wide.
00:05:14
It goes wider than that because there is no no thing, no language in the Constitution requiring the existence or the role of a flutus of a First Lady.
00:05:26
It's one of those rule of thumb things, always been a tradition.
00:05:31
And I love that you're pointing out the relatively amorphous nature of this.
00:05:37
First ladies are a golden goose for media, for documentaries, podcasts, books, scholarly papers, but there's no legal definition.
00:05:48
It's kind of a thing of, it's kind of a matter of what you as flutus want to do, some are definitely more active than others.
00:05:57
I will read a quick excerpt from who is a First Lady from the National Park Service.gov website nps.gov.
00:06:05
A director of social affairs, presidential a's on symbol of strength, policy advocate, political reformer, keeper of the people's house.
00:06:13
What's interesting, partner and confidant, the First Ladies of the United States have taken on numerous roles throughout American history as the cultural milieu shifted so to the expectations and responsibilities of a First Lady.
00:06:28
Yes, they shift back and forth with that.
00:06:31
I'll see you there on National Park Service and also go to the White House Historical Association, great summation written by Rosie Kane.
00:06:40
And this is with big thanks to our research associate, Jeff WhitehouseHistory.org.
00:06:47
They say commentators, scholars, and American society have typically defined the role of First Lady by marriage, elevating the status of the presidential spouse,
00:06:58
rather than focusing on the duties performed by these individuals, hosting events, personal, political confidants to the president, supporting political and social causes,
00:07:10
which we'll get to.
00:07:11
And then historically serving as a symbolic model, there I say propaganda of what American womanhood means at the time of that administration or to that administration.
00:07:25
I guess the reason I cringe a little bit at that because it sort of comes off somewhat as sort of America's housekeeper, which feels a little dated.
00:07:32
I don't know about you.
00:07:34
Yeah, these these individuals are often called White House hostesses because a lot of what they're doing is what we would deem soft diplomacy,
00:07:44
you know what I mean, figuring out how to run the party.
00:07:48
Let's get to let's get to one of our first or two of our first examples.
00:07:53
Old Thomas Jefferson, a uniquely humble guy, the kind of dude who had the modesty to look at the Christian Bible and say, I have some notes.
00:08:04
So Thomas Jefferson, who we call him TJ for ridiculous history purposes, he actually had two unconventional first ladies, one being his daughter Martha and the other being his buddy James Madison's wife Dolly.
00:08:18
This is a sad story, however, because it is due to the fact that his wife passed away 20 years before his inauguration.
00:08:28
And I would say even the propaganda of this was even more important in the early days.
00:08:33
That's exactly right.
00:08:34
Yes.
00:08:35
Thomas Jefferson's wife Martha sadly passed away long before he ascended to the position of Potus.
00:08:44
So as a result of this unfortunate passing, when Thomas Jefferson ascends to the office of Potus, they need someone to fill that first lady role.
00:08:55
His eldest daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph steps in and she becomes the first lady, the lead host for everyone visiting the presidency when it is the Jefferson administration.
00:09:11
She goes on and we're leaning again on WhitehouseHistory.org here, a great bio of Martha Jefferson Randolph.
00:09:19
She goes on to get a private education.
00:09:23
And let's be honest, not all women can get this in the 1700s.
00:09:28
She travels with her father T Jeffies across across the world.
00:09:33
She marries a guy named Thomas Mann Randolph on February 23rd, 1790, shout out to our earlier honorifics episode.
00:09:43
This is her relative, but it's distant relative.
00:09:48
You know what I mean?
00:09:50
Like it's okay.
00:09:52
It's an issue.
00:09:52
No, okay.
00:09:52
Yeah.
00:09:53
I'll allow it.
00:09:54
It's certainly better than, you know, other examples of cousin Mary.
00:09:58
Yeah.
00:09:59
They have 12 children together.
00:10:01
Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha, 11 of whom survived Randolph.
00:10:05
That's great.
00:10:07
I don't know, I like the sound of that.
00:10:09
11 of these children, these issue, they survive to adulthood.
00:10:14
The couples live in at Jefferson's plantation, Monticello.
00:10:19
We could do multiple episodes about that.
00:10:22
Right.
00:10:22
I mean, we do know, of course, that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.
00:10:26
Yes.
00:10:26
Not great.
00:10:28
Martha was the head of the households and kind of handled all of the affairs and managed the staff.
00:10:36
And that included the enslaved workers, which is right.
00:10:40
Rough.
00:10:40
And she was doing this, not just at her dad's spot, Monticello, but also at her husband's plantation edge hill.
00:10:48
So Thomas Jefferson fast forward.
00:10:50
He's elected to the presidency.
00:10:52
And when he is, his eldest daughter travels up to DC.
00:10:56
And she serves as what they call the White House hostess during the winter social seasons, 18 to 1803 at 1805 to 1806.
00:11:09
I look, the idea of social seasons like the gollas, the balls, the fun raising meetings.
00:11:16
It still happens in certain upper echelons of US society.
00:11:20
And it always seems so silly to me.
00:11:23
There's a winter social season.
00:11:24
Surely there's a summer social season as well.
00:11:27
They require a wearing of different hats and garments, you know, more, more flowy white garments in the summer.
00:11:34
And perhaps, you know, a little more bundled up in the winter.
00:11:36
Why are you wearing a tuxedo, Jack?
00:11:39
It's after seven lemon.
00:11:41
What am I a farmer?
00:11:42
What am I a farmer?
00:11:43
Very good.
00:11:44
Very good.
00:11:44
Thirty rock that relationship that will they want day of of Liz Lemon and Jack Donnege never ceases to entertain me.
00:11:52
Yeah.
00:11:52
Excellent rewatchability factor.
00:11:55
Absolutely.
00:11:56
The density of jokes.
00:11:57
My favorite is the one throw away line.
00:11:59
My new single, my new single is dropping is dropping.
00:12:04
That's Tracy Jordan's wife when she becomes part of a reality show.
00:12:09
You just scramble my brains.
00:12:10
And as for the will, they won't they have Liz and Jack, they won't they?
00:12:14
It's not meant to be sexual attention.
00:12:16
It's more of a mentor, a mentee relationship.
00:12:19
Very lost in translation.
00:12:20
I guess there's a little of that.
00:12:22
I just, who was I listening to?
00:12:24
It was the blank check podcast with Griffin and David, who I love dearly.
00:12:28
They were talking about how every time someone points out this idea of simmering sexual attention on the show, both Jack and Liz get intensely annoyed.
00:12:37
Yeah.
00:12:38
Right.
00:12:38
I mean, picture your dad naked or don't.
00:12:42
You know what I mean?
00:12:43
Please don't.
00:12:43
That's what that's what it's going towards.
00:12:45
So speaking of close relationships with one's pattern, familiar, master of the segue.
00:12:51
Thank you, sir.
00:12:51
Martha is doing really well at first because during these social seasons in her role, functionally as the first lady,
00:13:02
she is a huge advocate for Tommy Jeff's career.
00:13:06
And she gets a reputation in the salons in the philosophical discourse of the day.
00:13:12
People are looking around and saying, Hey, you know, I know she's the president's kid.
00:13:17
But even with all that aside, she's really smart.
00:13:20
She's a cracker, Jack.
00:13:22
Yeah, attending salons, right now intellectual discussions and all of that stuff.
00:13:27
But behind the headlines, behind those happy conversations, there are financial difficulties.
00:13:33
Both her husband, man Randolph, add to her father, Tommy Jay are continually worried about the coin.
00:13:42
So her father dies in 1826 spoiler.
00:13:47
And the family is forced to sell Monticello.
00:13:50
Martha moves to Tufton to live with her eldest son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph.
00:13:56
And at this point, I want to take a moment and say, there's a diminishing return with remixing family names.
00:14:06
At some point, give someone a cool family name.
00:14:09
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, you could have just added the middle name with something cool, like Dash or Fox or Ziggy.
00:14:17
I do like man Randolph though.
00:14:18
I've got to say I'm not going to lie.
00:14:20
Did jump in here.
00:14:21
This reminds me of John Adams second, who was the son of John Quincy Adams.
00:14:25
Right.
00:14:26
It was obviously the son of John Adams.
00:14:28
And also John Adams married his first cousin.
00:14:30
It's rough, man.
00:14:32
It's just like a franny magical realism nerds in the crowd.
00:14:36
It's just like 100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
00:14:41
The most difficult thing about reading that book is everybody has some combination of the same three to four names.
00:14:50
Anyway, always give your kids a back pocket middle name to differentiate themselves.
00:14:55
If you take nothing else from this, ultimately, we know that Martha also, despite having so many kids with man Randolph,
00:15:05
she ultimately went on the rocks.
00:15:10
Their marriage was not its best.
00:15:13
They were estranged for a long time.
00:15:15
And right before he dies in 1828, she reconciles with him.
00:15:20
And then she spends the rest of her life sort of moving around the United States, living with her children on their property, sometimes in Boston,
00:15:31
sometimes in DC or Virginia.
00:15:33
And then upon her death, she is buried alongside her husband and her father at Monticello.
00:15:40
And then along comes Dolly.
00:15:43
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Wasn't that delicious?
00:18:30
So good.
00:18:30
Your bill, ladies.
00:18:31
I got it.
00:18:32
No, I got it.
00:18:33
Seriously, I insist.
00:18:36
I insist at first.
00:18:37
I'm going to be silly.
00:18:38
You don't be silly.
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Enter Dolly Madison, who I was doing some pretty clever political maneuverings,
00:19:08
you know, within her role as first lady.
00:19:11
She was essentially trying to ensure that her husband, James Madison, would become the next president.
00:19:17
Yeah.
00:19:19
Yeah.
00:19:19
And going back to WhiteHouseHistory.org, we see that there's a Vinn diagram of first lady or floatus hood, dumb word we just made up.
00:19:30
Dolly Madison is unofficially doing some whispering to the King Makers, right?
00:19:39
And during the Jefferson administration, her husband, James is Secretary of State and the entire time she's stepping in.
00:19:47
You know, hey, if Martha can't make it, I'm happy to host this gala.
00:19:52
You know what I mean?
00:19:53
I'll receive the ambassador from wherever.
00:19:56
So they were essentially doing this kind of in tandem, Martha and Dolly splitting up the duties, kind of alternating sort of a double dragon situation for anybody who played an increasingly obscure video game.
00:20:10
Love a good beat him up.
00:20:11
Yeah.
00:20:12
Yeah.
00:20:12
Love a good scrawler.
00:20:14
And every time this is a true story, folks, every time my pal Nolan I are on the road, we do look for an arcade if it's available,
00:20:25
right?
00:20:27
Love a good arcade.
00:20:27
If anybody ever finds themselves in the Atlanta area, I highly recommend, I believe it's called round one at the Cumberland Mall, which is a cornucopia of incredible claw machines and obscure Japanese fighting cabinet games that characters you've never heard of,
00:20:43
not to mention like every rhythm game you could possibly want to try your hand.
00:20:46
And I think there are some elsewhere in the country too.
00:20:49
So look into round one if you're seeking a rad arcade.
00:20:53
Yeah, they're a chain and speaking of shades of power, right?
00:20:58
1801.
00:20:59
Let's learn a little bit of background.
00:21:03
Dolly and her husband James, who gets famous for other things later, they moved to DC because James is secretary of state.
00:21:11
And he's it's a friendship hire Tommy J.
00:21:15
Hyersam.
00:21:16
And because Jefferson is a widower, Dolly is periodically assisting Jefferson primarily when other women are visiting the White House or visiting the president.
00:21:30
So it's not just Tommy J hanging out in a room.
00:21:34
No, when she's hosting these social gatherings are, you know, like hosting the wives of powerful men.
00:21:40
And by, you know, getting in their good graces, she more or less had a pretty close walk to influencing some of these powerful men as well.
00:21:49
And she also to your excellent point about political machination, she also created an alternative hub of power over at the Madison House,
00:22:03
which was on F street.
00:22:05
What one Washingtonian observed during this time was the following, quote, after the president's the house of the secretary of state was the resort of most company politicians and diplomats could not resist Dolly's conciliatory disposition.
00:22:22
Her Frank gracious manners.
00:22:24
They frequented her evening circle and sat at her husband's table.
00:22:29
So she was the after party as well.
00:22:31
Oh yeah, the afters indeed.
00:22:33
And Dolly does get a lot of attention in the conversations around me.
00:22:37
First ladies, I think because she was so charming and she was also so politically adept.
00:22:43
But I don't think she came off as being duplicitous necessarily either.
00:22:49
She navigated it all, you know, with grace.
00:22:51
I would say any history remembers her pretty fondly for all of this stuff.
00:22:55
Oh yeah, 100 because she understands the we keep using the word symbolic and White House sources also will use the word symbolic.
00:23:06
But let's be honest, we're talking propaganda.
00:23:10
You know what I mean?
00:23:10
Like how autorethics are just fancy nicknames symbolic importance is just propaganda importance at this point.
00:23:17
That's right.
00:23:18
So Dolly basically becomes the quintessential first lady and that kind of prototype for the model of of American womanhood that we mentioned at the top of the show because of all of these,
00:23:31
you know, social graces and and ability to kind of play a man's game, you know, with the woman's wilds or whatever.
00:23:39
I don't know.
00:23:40
I'm speaking in the parlance of the time.
00:23:42
You know what I mean?
00:23:44
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:45
Jefferson for his part.
00:23:46
Look, I think a lot of people forget this about the guy.
00:23:50
He is he's got big startup CEO energy, right?
00:23:55
He's he's very much the guy who says, look, let's be informal, you know, the United States, it's an experiment.
00:24:03
We're throwing out all that stuffy old world, uh, the trappings, the marries, the trappings, the values.
00:24:10
So we're not going to sit people in this rigid diplomatic hierarchy.
00:24:15
He come to hang out with me, your boy, President Tommy Jeff figure out where you want to sit for dinner, you know, and then we'll we'll just hang out and Dolly becomes the the social glue or the bridge between these two very different worlds.
00:24:33
Sometimes it triggers international incidents.
00:24:35
That's right.
00:24:36
I mean, but you know, she did become an international figure because of some of these examples, one of which involved Jefferson creating a serious, uh, international,
00:24:46
uh, kerfuffle in 1803 by escorting Dolly to the dinner table instead of the wife of a British ambassador by the name of Anthony Mary.
00:24:57
Who am I sure we all know Ed remember?
00:25:01
Yeah, 100 percent.
00:25:02
Some of those stuffy kind of morays and and hierarchies that we had mentioned or that you had mentioned, Ben, um, would have dictated that that be the move.
00:25:10
But instead, they were kind of writing their own rules and maybe that flies, you know, in their own country.
00:25:17
But when folks are coming in from outside of the United States, it's kind of important to play by their rules, at least to some degree.
00:25:26
Wouldn't you say?
00:25:27
Yeah.
00:25:27
And diplomacy is sort of writing that fine line meeting in the middle before you push the envelope or before he takes somewhere, it's someone somewhere you have to find them where they're at.
00:25:39
This sounds weird, but it was a very big deal.
00:25:41
It's 1803 picture the night of Dolly is trying to get Tommy Jeff to do the right thing.
00:25:49
And she's saying, no, no, don't take me.
00:25:51
You got to, this is very important to these weird British people.
00:25:55
Yeah, she's demonstrating some more diplomatic chops than the press cultural knowledge.
00:26:00
You know, percent like in certain areas of the Middle East shouldn't eat with your left hand, nor shake with it.
00:26:06
She knew all of these tips and tricks.
00:26:08
Jefferson either didn't know or because of his big startup energy.
00:26:13
He didn't care.
00:26:15
Anthony Mary and the Mary misses were not fans of this.
00:26:20
They felt snubbed and it became something called the Mary affair.
00:26:25
It's so petty.
00:26:27
Who walks to dinner in what order?
00:26:29
That's wild.
00:26:30
It's just it's another example that we see all the time in history how one seemingly insignificant events or a butterfly effect situation can lead to toppling dominoes further down the line and can't actually cause hot wars.
00:26:47
I mean, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for example, a big deal.
00:26:53
A person was killed, of course, but it would not have at the time seemed to be enough to set off this powder keg that would lead to a world war.
00:27:02
We're not dealing with those kind of stakes here, but it did increase some already pretty, you know, rough political tensions between the United States and the United Kingdom.
00:27:14
You know, for reasons.
00:27:15
You can imagine other other things were at play.
00:27:17
Yeah.
00:27:17
The powder keg situation almost always occurs because there were rising tensions that were sort of waiting for an ignition point.
00:27:27
And that's what happened with Franz Ferdinand.
00:27:29
This is also what could have happened with the Mary incident because from the perspective of the ambassador from Great Britain,
00:27:39
it's it's a matter of not something petty.
00:27:43
It's a matter of do you respect the king?
00:27:47
Do you respect the empire?
00:27:49
And like we don't though, right?
00:27:51
Isn't this right?
00:27:52
We don't like kings here.
00:27:54
So, you know, it hasn't been that far removed from the old American revolution.
00:27:59
So those tensions are incredibly high.
00:28:02
Can still, wouldn't you say?
00:28:03
Yeah, people are still alive remembering this, you know, it's not like hanging out in Manchester and taking the piss out with some of your friends about revolution.
00:28:12
This is very close to everybody's heart and experience at this point.
00:28:16
So to Anthony Mary, he is the avatar of the king of the state of the power of Great Britain.
00:28:24
So if you do something wrong or out of diplomatic protocol, even if he personally doesn't care, you have now besmirched the dignity of the state.
00:28:34
You have insulted the king himself.
00:28:37
You may as well have spat in his face, you know, exactly.
00:28:42
And Dolly, again, we can't shout her out enough.
00:28:46
Dolly works within these nuances of culture.
00:28:51
She is plugged into all of the feminine power makers in these diplomatic circles.
00:28:58
So she says, look, we don't want to have this blow up any more than it already has.
00:29:04
So she reaches out not directly to Elizabeth Mary, Anthony Mary's wife, who apparently got dist.
00:29:12
She goes through a common friend of a friend, the wife of the Spanish ambassador, they make friends.
00:29:18
There's a lot of, you know, house of cards kind of maneuvering here.
00:29:23
And eventually, they bury the hatchet.
00:29:27
They succeed in inviting the Mary's over to dinner at her home at Madison's F street home.
00:29:35
So she may have saved the day in a way that history ignores.
00:29:39
Well, she tried to prevent the whole affair in the first place.
00:29:43
And she just, you know, Jefferson didn't listen to her.
00:29:46
And then she ended up having to clean up his mess.
00:29:49
I wonder why he didn't listen to her probably because she was a woman.
00:29:53
Yeah, but I just, you know, he's doing it sort of in, it's in her favor, right?
00:29:58
Like to escort her.
00:30:00
And she's saying, you know, no, it's the better move to escort the wife of the diplomat.
00:30:05
And he is, he just doesn't like to be told what to do or is he actively pushing back against the idea of following the British kind of code.
00:30:14
I would go with the latter there.
00:30:16
I think it seems very, not very smart.
00:30:20
No, but, you know, not a hell of dying on.
00:30:24
Yeah, no, not everybody's smart all the time.
00:30:27
And this, this leads us to a another example.
00:30:30
Again, this will probably be a continuing series.
00:30:34
But Andrew Jackson was dude.
00:30:37
Yeah, famously not a great president.
00:30:39
He and not a good person.
00:30:41
Right, neither.
00:30:43
He also had two first ladies.
00:30:45
There was some weird, as Jeff points out, so weird legality of marriage stuff going on with his first wife.
00:30:53
Excellent diplomacy there, Jeff.
00:30:54
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It would seem that some of those negative qualities that we hinted at led to quite the scandal with his first wife.
00:34:21
She did not even make it to his inauguration because she sadly due to something, an amorphous sickness that seemed to be brought on by just like anxiety around the way she was treated by Andrew Jackson.
00:34:35
Do you have any more details around that, guys?
00:34:38
Yeah.
00:34:39
Rachel Jackson was the if she died on December 22nd, 1828.
00:34:46
She lived with Jackson at the hermitage, but she died just days after his election and before his inauguration, which was in 1829.
00:34:58
So she never served as first lady, but you gotta have a first lady at this point in time.
00:35:04
You gotta have somebody being the White House host individual.
00:35:09
So according to our pal Jeff, there's another story with Rachel Jackson in particular that doesn't even touch on his official to first ladies.
00:35:20
The duties of the first lady after Rachel Jackson dies go to her niece, Emily Donaldson.
00:35:28
And you know, I do have to ask, it seems like it's up to the discretion of the president and his advisors as to who the right person is to kind of step into that role.
00:35:39
Because there's no like line of succession per se, right?
00:35:42
No, there are no, what is this Europe?
00:35:45
Yeah, there are no rigid, rigid instructions or nor a rubric on what to do.
00:35:51
We know that Rachel Jackson was viciously attacked in the press.
00:35:58
So much so that it probably traumatized her when she is buried in an area in your Nashville, Tennessee, her epitaph bears the following,
00:36:10
a being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not dishonor.
00:36:16
So it seems that Andrew Jackson was so angry about the campaign slurs hurled against his wife that he needed that carved in stone on her grave.
00:36:30
Am I mispeaking?
00:36:31
I mean, you know, it does seem like his first wife, her condition worsened as a result of stress, you know, yeah, traumatic,
00:36:42
you know, and she she was born in Virginia.
00:36:45
She traveled through the wilderness of Tennessee with her parents when she was frontier baby.
00:36:51
Yeah, frontier baby.
00:36:53
She also was previously married before she married Jackson, which was a big, big deal in a big, bad way at that point, likely would have been used as ammunition in that slander campaign.
00:37:05
Yeah.
00:37:05
So she marries this guy, Lewis Roberts, when she is 17, he is the child of a very big deal family in Mercer County.
00:37:16
And apparently he was quite the jealous husband so much so that it made her living situation impossible.
00:37:25
They separate in 1790 and then she gets word not from him that he's filing for divorce.
00:37:32
Divorce can always be a traumatic messy thing, but folks we're a little bit better off in 2025 than we are in 1790.
00:37:42
Eventually the divorce goes through Andrew Jackson marries her the next year or they think the divorce goes through record scratch max turns out turns out that the the later president and his new wife learn that this first husband,
00:38:05
Lewis Roberts, didn't get a divorce actually.
00:38:09
He just got permission to file one.
00:38:12
And so when they get married, this guy comes back out from from the blue and sues them on the grounds of adultery.
00:38:22
Wow, not a good PR moment for the for the would be president after the divorce was finally granted the Jackson's remarried in 1794.
00:38:32
And they, you know, that this was no particular fault of their own, you know, this was something that just was not clear.
00:38:39
And you know, we know also that the communication lines of communication were slow.
00:38:44
If if things like the court systems grind slowly today back in those days, due to the fact that you couldn't even get word to somebody about something it would have been exponentially slower.
00:38:55
Those whispers, however, because of that a word, that scarlet letter, adultery and bigamy even, the rumors just kind of wouldn't stop.
00:39:05
And they followed Rachel around as Jackson started to make his rise in politics and as a general.
00:39:13
Yeah, he was quick to be super hot headed about any of these rumors.
00:39:20
If he heard someone saying them in person, it was smash on site.
00:39:25
He was ready to fight with you.
00:39:26
I think where I did misspeaks lightly is, you know, we know Andrew Jackson had some serious moral issues, you know, when when was a very aggressive dude?
00:39:36
It would seem though, however, that the stress that led to Rachel's untimely passing was less caused by him than it was caused by just what he was and represented and the need to kind of tear him down a peg.
00:39:50
And she was essentially a target for that.
00:39:53
He was going to every effort that he could manage to defend her honor.
00:39:58
Yeah, he was fighting the tabloids of the time we could say.
00:40:02
And look, everybody who actually knew Rachel Jackson, again, not officially a first lady.
00:40:09
Everybody knew her loved her because she was down home, you know, she was not pretentious.
00:40:14
She was very kind.
00:40:16
A lot of people might not even be fans of Andrew Jackson himself, but when they go to the hermitage, they're welcomed as family.
00:40:24
The Jackson's never have any children of their own, but they take in a lot of Rachel's relatives.
00:40:30
And she had a ton of relatives.
00:40:33
They adopted a nephew.
00:40:34
They named him in a burst of creativity.
00:40:37
Andrew Jackson Jr.
00:40:39
Oh geez.
00:40:40
Yeah, they also raised other nephews as their own Andrew Jackson Donaldson.
00:40:46
No, who eventually married a cousin as well.
00:40:50
First cousin that would same Emily, one of Rachel's favorite nieces.
00:40:54
So match made in heaven there.
00:40:57
When Jackson was finally elected president, he planned to have Donaldson serve as private secretary with Emily hanging around to keep Rachel company.
00:41:09
Yeah.
00:41:10
Yeah.
00:41:11
And then of course, as we mentioned, Rachel Jackson passes away.
00:41:15
And with this, Emily gets an unforeseen promotion.
00:41:20
Jackson says, why don't you serve as the hostess?
00:41:24
You do the, and again, this is very dated.
00:41:27
You do the woman folk stuff.
00:41:29
That's what they're thinking.
00:41:30
And she is 21 at this point.
00:41:32
She enters the White House.
00:41:34
She takes care of everything.
00:41:37
Her, her uncle, you know, the president, her own husband.
00:41:41
She has four children, three are born at the White House.
00:41:45
And she takes care of visiting relatives and then official guests.
00:41:50
It's a big family in the White House at this time.
00:41:53
And everybody beats her again.
00:41:55
They lover.
00:41:56
They say, look, I might not agree with Old Andy, but his sidekick is awesome.
00:42:04
And also, she will stick up to the president of the United States on issues of principle.
00:42:11
If she has a problem with something, if she thinks he's, you know, rolling off the road in one way or another, then she is speaking truth to power, which is a very difficult thing to do.
00:42:21
But she also dies of tuberculosis in 1836.
00:42:27
And so it came to pass that during the last months of the Jackson administration.
00:42:34
Here we go.
00:42:35
More confusing names.
00:42:37
Sarah York Jackson, who is the wife of Andrew Jackson Jr., the adopted nephew, functionally becomes the first lady.
00:42:46
That's right.
00:42:46
And you know, it's interesting how all of these first ladies were so popular and so beloved.
00:42:54
Despite Andrew Jackson, again, being a bit of a pill.
00:42:58
And we, was he popular at the time, though?
00:43:02
I mean, I know history remembers him for things like the Indian removal act of 1830 and, you know, pushing for states' rights and ethnic cleansing, you know, of Native Americans from state lands and also being very aggressive towards the civil rights of free people of color,
00:43:20
you know, and having also been a pretty brutal slave owner himself.
00:43:24
But I'm just wondering what was the feeling?
00:43:27
A lot of people seemed like they might have been cool with a lot of the stuff in the day of his presidency.
00:43:32
Contemporarily, he did have a lot of opposition, but he also had a lot of support.
00:43:38
There's a reason he became president.
00:43:40
Now, if you go back through one of the favorite games of we historical president buffs, you'll, you'll see that he is not ranked as low as a lot of presidents on best of worst.
00:43:52
But he is not ranked very high either.
00:43:55
He was always polemical.
00:43:58
He was always a kind of demagogue, you know, crowds loved him.
00:44:03
They loved his speeches.
00:44:05
He was very much against certain aspects of banking.
00:44:09
That part we could agree with.
00:44:11
He was opposed to the second bank of the United States.
00:44:14
Because it wasn't there a scandal to where he like removed deposits of some kind and was censured by the legislature.
00:44:21
Well, the second bank was an absolute existential threat to the idea of democracy.
00:44:30
It was a private company, but it functioned as a government sponsored monopoly.
00:44:36
And I do appreciate that you're doing the needful thing here as well, which is he definitely participated in widespread genocidal attempts and against Native American populations.
00:44:52
You could put thousands of deaths at his feet.
00:44:55
And again, the terrifying thing is that gained him a lot of support.
00:45:01
So people might be opposed to his ideas, but then when they meet, when they meet his niece, they think here's someone I can talk stuff out with.
00:45:13
Or when they meet Sarah York Jackson, who is his adoptive daughter-in-law, they think, okay, well, I can talk to her.
00:45:21
Yeah.
00:45:22
And she continued to kind of carry the torch of that role by hosting functions at the White House, along with Emily Donaldson.
00:45:31
And when Donaldson departed two years later, she took over fully.
00:45:36
Yeah.
00:45:36
So let's learn a little bit about Sarah.
00:45:39
Sarah York is born somewhere in the early 1800s, right at the turn of the 19th century, 1803 to 1805.
00:45:47
She's in Philly.
00:45:48
She is orphaned as a child.
00:45:51
She is raised by relatives.
00:45:54
She marries Andrew Jackson Jr.
00:45:57
that adopted son in 1831.
00:46:00
She, like so many others, lives at the hermitage and she, like other people, oversees the operation of the household,
00:46:10
including enslaved people on the property.
00:46:15
And fire damages the hermitage in 1834.
00:46:19
So Sarah York Jackson now and her family moved to the White House.
00:46:24
And she, as you said, is assisting Emily Donaldson in these hosting positions.
00:46:30
Jackson, and she sees out the administration.
00:46:34
She does this after Emily Donaldson passes when Jackson leaves the presidency.
00:46:40
Sarah York Jackson and her family go back to Tennessee.
00:46:44
And she takes care of her father-in-law, the former president, until he passes away in 1845, at which point the ownership of the hermitage goes to the adopted son Andrew Jackson Jr.
00:46:59
and get this know, he sells it to pay off some pretty crippling debt in 1856.
00:47:07
So after Sarah's husband passed, she continued on at the hermitage until she passed away on August 23rd of 1887.
00:47:15
And she is buried there in a cemetery on the grounds.
00:47:19
And with that, I, uh, I proposed that we haul it a day here because the next few, uh, first lady, flutist situations were examining get a little bit deeper for the scope of today's episode.
00:47:34
Uh, Tune in, we'll talk about Van Buren in our next exploration.
00:47:39
And we will also, light spoiler, talk about some, uh, flotus rolls that were not occupied by women at all.
00:47:47
Oh, man, I can't wait.
00:47:49
Um, if you want to find us on the internet, you can do so.
00:47:52
I am at how now Noel Brown on Instagram.
00:47:55
Ben working the fine ridiculous historians out in podcast land, find you.
00:48:00
Yes, should you care to sip the social meat?
00:48:02
You can find me calling myself in a burst of creativity at Ben Bullin on Instagram at Ben Bullin HSW on X, or the website BenBullin.com.
00:48:12
Big, big thanks to Mr.
00:48:13
Max Williams, our research associate Jeff, we need a good nickname for Jeff.
00:48:18
Uh, we'll, we'll get there one, one day.
00:48:20
What do you got?
00:48:21
Do you got one?
00:48:21
Jeff Mac tonight, Bartlett.
00:48:26
There we go.
00:48:27
I guys love that episode, man.
00:48:28
What a fun discussion that was.
00:48:30
What a wild ride.
00:48:31
Uh, yeah, big, big thanks.
00:48:33
Of course to AJ Bahamas Jacobs to, uh, Jonathan Strickland, AKA the quister and Alex Tijuana Williams.
00:48:41
Indeed, Chris Frost here to see Jeff Coats here in spirit.
00:48:44
Max Williams, the man behind the curtain.
00:48:47
Mm hmm.
00:48:48
Add big thanks to the curtain.
00:48:50
We paid a pretty hefty price for it, but I, I think it's good.
00:48:53
I think it's cool for us to have a curtain.
00:48:56
We got at the same time we got the giant grandfather clock that we occasionally referenced.
00:49:00
Yes, yes.
00:49:01
Yes, we did.
00:49:01
And if you want to learn more about the mythos, please check out our past present and future episodes.
00:49:08
As always, thank you for tuning in folks.
00:49:12
Uh, there's so much more to explore.
00:49:13
We're glad you're doing it with us.
00:49:15
And no, thank you to you.
00:49:16
Uh, and you as well, Ben.
00:49:18
We'll see you next time folks.
00:49:19
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
00:49:32
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Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy?
00:51:35
Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest with your guardrails in place.
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With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on what your kids are spending with real-time notifications.
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Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight.
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Get started risk-free at Greenlight.com/iHeart.
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