Letitia Tyler Semple

This photograph is of a portrait of White House hostess Letitia Tyler Semple by Charles King. She temporarily served as White House hostess or first lady for a few months in 1844. During the Civil War she served as nurse in a Confederate hospital. Near the end of the war she opened a school, the Eclectic Institute, in Baltimore. This portrait is believed to have been painted by Charles King (possibly Charles Bird King) while Letitia Tyler Semple lived at the White House, posing on the South Portico as she looked over the South Grounds.