Collection The First Ladies
Biographies & Portraits
Eliza McCardle Johnson Engraving
- Credit
- Library of Congress
Eliza McCardle Johnson Engraving
Creator: John Chester Buttre, 1883.
During the Civil War, Eliza McCardle Johnson was thrown out of her home in east Tennessee and forced to find shelter elsewhere. The strain of the war left Mrs. Johnson weak, and so her daughter, Martha Johnson Patterson, served as White House hostess. As hostess, Mrs. Patterson found portraits of John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, and Franklin Pierce in an attic. She had them framed and hung in the White House, a tradition still practiced in the mansion today.
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