This portrait is of Sarah York Jackson, the wife of President Andrew Jackson's adopted son. Mrs. Jackson assisted Emily Tennessee Donelson, niece of President Jackson and his deceased wife Rachel Jackson, with her duties as White House hostess. Bates Littlehales photographed this portrait in May 1962 in the frame that housed the portrait around the John F. Kennedy administration.
Artist
Mayna Treanor Avent
Date of Work
ca. 1921
Medium
oil paint, canvas
Type
Portrait
Credit
White House Collection/White House Historical Association
Born to parents Elliott T. Lane and Jane Buchanan Lane on May 9, 1830, in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, Harriet Lane lost both of her parents by eleven. Jane’s brother, then-Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, became Harriet’s legal guardian. Harriet attended boarding school, first in Pennsylvania and later in Virginia and Washington, D.C., and lived with her uncle at his Wheatland esta
Most Americans have never heard of Harriet Lane, but at the time of her uncle James Buchanan’s presidency, she was the White House hostess, a friend to Queen Victoria, namesake to “societies, ships of war, [and] neck-ties,” “First Lady of the Land,” and a national celebrity.1 How, then, have Americans forgotten her?
First ladies hold a unique place in American history. The collection of first ladies' gowns and artifacts remains one of the most popular exhibitions, visited by millions of annual visitors at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C..1 First ladies are the focus of documentaries, podcasts, books, and scholarly works that examine their lives and contributions
Article 2 Section 1 of the United States Constitution begins with the following: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”1 This passage goes on to define the length of the president’s term; how the president will be elected; citizenship and age requirements; presidential succession; compensation; and finally, the presidential oath that all chief execut
By the fall of 1860, the Buchanan administration seemed headed for a tense but dramatic conclusion. Earlier that year, President James Buchanan had pointedly declined the renomination, exhausted by a fractured relationship with Congress and last minute attempts to quash talk of southern states’ secession from the union. He believed that his best efforts at reconciliation between states’ rights activists and abol