Anna Harrison
| Anna Harrison | |
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| First Lady of the United States | |
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In role March 4, 1841 – April 4, 1841 Serving with Jane Harrison (Acting) |
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| President | William Henry Harrison |
| Preceded by | Angelica Van Buren (Acting) |
| Succeeded by | Letitia Tyler |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Anna Elizabeth Symmes July 25, 1775 Morristown, New Jersey, British America |
| Died | February 25, 1864 (aged 88) North Bend, Ohio, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | William Henry Harrison (1795–1841) |
| Children | Elizabeth John Lucy William John Mary Benjamin Carter Anna James |
| Signature |  |
 America's First Ladies, Anna Harrison, Letitia Tyler & Julia Tyler, 2013, C-SPAN
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Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison (July 25, 1775 – February 25, 1864), wife of President William Henry Harrison and grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison, was nominally First Lady of the United States during her husband's one-month term in 1841, but she never entered the White House. At the age of 65 years during her husband's presidential term, she is the oldest woman ever to become First Lady, as well as having the distinction of holding the title for the shortest length of time, and the first person to be widowed while holding the title. She was the last First Lady to have been born in British America.
Anna was born at her father's estate Solitude, just outside Morristown, New Jersey (present day Wheatsheaf Farms subdivision off Sussex Avenue in Morris Township, New Jersey) on July 25, 1775, to Judge John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill Symmes of Long Island. Her father was a Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and later became a prominent landowner in southwestern Ohio. When her mother died in 1776 her father disguised himself as a British soldier to carry her on horseback through the British lines to her grandparents on Long Island, who cared for her during the war. Her father was also deputy to the Provincial Congress of New Jersey (1775-1776), the Chairman of the Sussex County Committee of Safety during the Revolution, and a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress (1785-1786).
She grew up in Long Island, receiving an unusually broad education for a woman of the times. She attended Clinton Academy at Easthampton, Long Island, and the private school of Isabella Graham in New York City.
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Wikipedia