Julia Gardiner Tyler
| Julia Tyler | |
|---|---|
Tyler's White House Portrait (September 1844)
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| First Lady of the United States | |
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In role June 26, 1844 – March 4, 1845 |
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| President | John Tyler |
| Preceded by | Priscilla Tyler (Acting) |
| Succeeded by | Sarah Polk |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
May 4, 1820 East Hampton, New York, United States |
| Died | July 10, 1889 (aged 69) Richmond, Virginia, United States |
| Spouse(s) | John Tyler (1844 – d.1862) |
| Children | David Alex Julia Lachlan Lyon Robert Pearl |
| Religion |
Presbyterianism (Before 1872) Roman Catholicism (1872–1889) |
| Signature |  |
 America's First Ladies, Anna Harrison, Letitia Tyler & Julia Tyler, 2013, C-SPAN
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Julia Gardiner Tyler (May 4, 1820 – July 10, 1889) was the second wife of John Tyler, who was the tenth President of the United States, and served as First Lady of the United States from June 26, 1844, to March 4, 1845.
Julia Gardiner Tyler was born in 1820 on New York's Gardiner's Island, one of the largest privately owned islands in the United States. She was the daughter of David Gardiner, a landowner and New York State Senator (1824 to 1828), and Juliana MacLachlan Gardiner. Her ancestry was part Dutch, part Scottish and part English. She was raised in the town of East Hampton and the small hamlet of Bay Shore. In 1839, she shocked polite society by appearing, posed with an unidentified man and identified as "The Rose of Long Island", in a newspaper advertisement for a middle-class department store. Her family took her to Europe to avoid further publicity and allow her notoriety to subside. They first left for London, arriving on October 29, 1840. They visited England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Ireland and Scotland before returning to New York in September 1841.
On January 20, 1842, the 21-year-old Julia was introduced to President John Tyler at a White House reception. After the death of his first wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, on September 10, 1842, Tyler made it clear that he wished to get involved with Julia. Initially the high-spirited and independent-minded northern beauty felt little attraction to the grave, reserved Virginia gentleman, who was thirty years her senior. He first proposed to her on February 22, 1843, when she was 22, at a White House Masquerade Ball. She refused that and later proposals he attempted. However, later romantic correspondence between the two and increasing time periods spent together prompted open public speculation about the relationship.
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