J.L. Bell debunks the myth at Boston 1775. A taste: Even the White House Historical Association passes on that factoid, though fobbing it off on others: “Some historians note that First Lady Dolley Madison originally suggested the idea of a public...
First ladies
The Author’s Corner with Jeanne Abrams
Jeanne Abrams is a Professor, University Libraries at the University of Denver. This interview is based on her new book, First Ladies of the Republic: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and the Creation of an Iconic American Role (NYU Press, 2018). JF: What...
Not Since the Kennedys
It appears that Catholicism has returned to the White House. One of the things we learned during the Trump visit to the Vatican is that Melania Trump is Catholic. Sarah Pulliam Bailey reports at The Washington Post. A taste: After she...
De Facto First Ladies
What role will Ivanka Trump play in the White House? Will she do the work of the First Lady while Melania Trump is living in New York with her son Barron? JSTOR Daily has a nice historical piece on the...
From Presidents' Failures to Their Wives' Successes
Michael David Cohen, editor of the Correspondence of James K. Polk and Research Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, checks in with another post from this weekend’s annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. For his previous posts...
Reflections on Gender and Antebellum Political Leadership at #oah2016
We were very pleased to have Elise Leal, a Ph.D candidate in American history at Baylor University, writing for us this weekend from the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Providence. Leal’s research examines the relationship between evangelicalism,...
Abigail Adams: Letters
The Library of America has announced the publication of Abigail Adams: Letters. The collection of 430 letters from the former first lady is edited by historian and Adams scholar Edith Gelles. In a post at The Library of America blog, Gelles...
That Time Gerald Ford Lost His Voice
This past week at the Fred W. Smith Library at Mount Vernon I attended a discussion of American first ladies with C-SPAN’s Susan Swain and presidential historian Richard Norton Smith. The discussion was based on Swain’s book First Ladies: Presidential...
C-SPAN’s “First Ladies: Influence & Image”
Did you get a chance to see the first installment of C-SPAN’s new series on American First Ladies? It looks like the cable network is devoting Monday nights for the course of the next year (with a break in the...