Harriet Lane .

Unique among first ladies, Harriet Lane acted as hostess for the only president who never married. James Buchanan was her favorite uncle and her guardian after she was orphaned at the age of eleven. And of all the ladies of the White House, few achieved such great success in deeply troubled times as this polished young woman in her 20s.

She was born in 1830 in the rich farming country of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Her uncle supervised her sound education in private school, completed by two years at the Visitation Convent in Georgetown. By this time "Nunc" was secretary of state, and he introduced her to fashionable circles. In 1854 she joined him in London, where he was minister to the Court of St. James's. Queen Victoria gave "dear Miss Lane" the rank of ambassador's wife; admiring suitors gave her the fame of a beauty.

"Hal" Lane enlivened social gatherings with a mixture of spontaneity and poise. After the sadness of the Pierce administration, the capital welcomed its "Democratic Queen" in 1857. Harriet Lane filled the White House with gaiety and flowers, and guided its social life with enthusiasm and discretion, winning national popularity.

As sectional tensions increased, she sat formal dinner parties with care, giving dignitaries proper precedence while keeping political foes apart. Her task became impossible. Seven states had seceded by the time Buchanan retired from office. He thankfully returned with his niece to his spacious country home, Wheatland, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The popular Miss Lane flirted happily with numerous beaux, but waited until she was almost 36 to marry. Within the next 18 years she faced one sorrow after another: the loss of her uncle, her two fine young sons, and her husband.

She decided to live in Washington, among friends made during happier years. She had acquired a sizable art collection, largely of European works, which she bequeathed to the government. Accepted after her death in 1903, it inspired an official of the Smithsonian Institution to call her the "First Lady of the National Collection of Fine Arts."

Harriet also dedicated a generous sum to endow a home for invalid children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It became an outstanding pediatric facility, and its reputation is a fitting memorial to the young lady who presided at the White House with such dignity and charm. The Harriet Lane Outpatient Clinics serve thousands of children today.

MARY LINCOLN .

As a girlhood companion remembered her, Mary Todd was vivacious and impulsive, but "she now and then could not restrain a witty, sarcastic speech that cut deeper than she intended . . ." A young lawyer called her "the very creature of excitement." All of these attributes marked her life, bringing her both happiness and tragedy.

She was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 13, 1818, the daughter of pioneer settlers. Mary lost her mother before the age of seven. Her father remarried; and Mary remembered her childhood as "desolate" although she belonged to the aristocracy of Lexington, with high-spirited social life and a sound private education. She loved finery, and her crisp intelligence polished the wiles of a Southern coquette.

At age 20, she went to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister. Here she met Abraham Lincoln - in his own words, "a poor nobody then." After a stormy courtship and a broken engagement, they were married. Though opposites in background and temperament, they were united by an enduring love. Their years in Springfield brought hard work and a family of boys. Lincoln's single term in Congress, for 1847-1849, gave Mary and the boys a winter in Washington, but scant opportunity for social life. Finally her faith in her husband won justification with his election as president in 1860.

Though her position fulfilled her high social ambitions, Mrs. Lincoln's years in the White House mingled misery with triumph. While the Civil War dragged on, Southerners scorned her as a traitor and citizens loyal to the Union suspected her of treason. Critics saw her spending sprees as unpatriotic extravagance, but when she curtailed entertaining after her son Willie's death in 1862, they accused her of shirking her social duties.

Yet Lincoln, watching her put her guests at ease during a White House reception, could say happily: "My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I ... fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out."

Her husband's assassination in 1865 shattered Mary Todd Lincoln. The next 17 years held nothing but sorrow. With her son "Tad" she traveled abroad in search of health, tortured by distorted ideas of her financial situation. After Tad died in 1871, she slipped into a world of illusion where poverty and murder pursued her. A misunderstood and tragic figure, she passed away in 1882 at her sister's home in Springfield - the same house from which she had walked as the bride of Abraham Lincoln, 40 years before.

Martha Johnson Patterson

ELIZA JOHNSON .

"I knew he'd be acquitted; I knew it," declared Eliza Johnson when told how the Senate had voted in her husband's impeachment trial. Her faith in him had never wavered during those difficult days in 1868, and her courage had dictated that all White House social events should continue as usual.

That faith began to develop many years before in east Tennessee, when Andrew Johnson first came to Greeneville and established a tailor shop. Eliza McCardle was not quite 16 then and Andrew only 17. Local tradition tells that on the day she first saw him she said to a girl friend, "There goes my beau!" She married him within a year, on May 17, 1827.

Eliza was born in 1810, the daughter of a shoemaker. Fortunately she had received a good basic education that she was delighted to share with Andrew. He already knew his letters and could read a bit, so she taught him writing and arithmetic. Her skill at keeping a house and bringing up a family - five children, in all - had much to do with Johnson's rapid rise to success. When the Civil War came and east Tennessee remained loyal to the Union, President Lincoln sent Andrew Johnson to Nashville as military governor. Rebel forces caught Eliza at home with part of the family. Only after months of uncertainty did they rejoin Andrew in Nashville. By 1865, a soldier son and son-in-law had died, and Eliza was an invalid for life.

Quite aside from the tragedy of Lincoln's death, Eliza Johnson found little pleasure in her husband's position as president. At the White House, her second-floor room was the center of activities for a large family including two sons, a widowed daughter and her children, and an older daughter Martha Patterson with her husband and their children. As a schoolgirl, Martha had often been the Polks' guest at the Executive Mansion; now she took up its social duties. She was a competent, unpretentious, and gracious hostess even during the impeachment crisis.

At the end of her husband's term, Eliza returned with relief to their home in Tennessee, restored from wartime vandalism. She lived to see the legislature of her state vindicate Andrew’s career by electing him to the Senate in 1875. She survived him by nearly six months, dying at the Pattersons' home in 1876.

JULIA GRANT .

Quite naturally, shy Lieutenant Grant lost his heart to friendly Julia Dent, and made his love known, as he later said, "in the most awkward manner imaginable." Her father opposed the match, saying that Grant was too poor, but Julia answered that she was poor herself. The ‘poverty’ on her part came from a slave-owner's lack of ready cash.

Born in 1826, Julia Dent had grown up on a plantation near St. Louis in a southern atmosphere. In memoirs prepared late in life - unpublished until 1975 - she pictured her girlhood as, "one long summer of sunshine, flowers, and smiles . . ." She attended the Misses Mauros' boarding school in St. Louis for seven years among the daughters of other affluent parents. A social favorite in that circle, she met "Ulys" at her home, where her family welcomed him as a West Point classmate of her brother. Soon she felt lonely without him, dreamed of him, and agreed to wear his West Point ring.

Julia and her lieutenant became engaged in 1844, but the Mexican War deferred the wedding for four long years. Their marriage met every test. Like other army wives, "dearest Julia" accompanied her husband to military posts. But when he was ordered to the West in 1852, she went to his parents' home in Galena, Illinois. Grant resigned his commission two years later to end the separation. After a failed business venture, the family - including four children - returned to Galena. When the Civil War called Grant to duty, Julia joined her husband near the scene of action whenever she could.

After so many years of hardship and stress, she rejoiced in his fame as a victorious general, and entered the White House in 1869 to begin, in her words, "the happiest period" of her life. With cabinet wives as her allies, she entertained extensively and lavishly. Upon leaving the White House in 1877, the Grants made a trip around the world that became a journey of triumphs. Julia proudly recalled details of hospitality and magnificent gifts they received.

But in 1884 Grant suffered yet another business failure and they lost all they had. To provide for his wife, he wrote his famous personal memoirs, racing with time and death. Julia was enabled her to live in comfort, surrounded by children and grandchildren, until her own death in 1902. In 1897, she had attended the dedication of Grant's monumental tomb in New York City where she was laid to rest. Her own chronicle of their years together ends with a firm declaration: "the light of his glorious fame still reaches out to me, falls upon me, and warms me."