Anna Harrison: Life Before the White House

Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison was born on July 25, 1775, near Morristown, New Jersey. Her parents were John Cleves Symmes and Anna Tuthill, who died a year after she was born. Three years after her mother passed away her father decided to take Anne to her maternal grandparent's home on Long Island since he was a soldier in the Continental Army and didn't feel like he could properly take care of a little girl. The War for Independence was going on at that time so in order to get his daughter through New York, which was British-occupied at the time, he dressed up as a British soldier and traveled by horseback with his then four year old.

She lived with her grandparents until 1794, and while there she received an excellent education. She went to school at Clinton Academy, and then moved on to live at the Boarding School of Isabella Marshal Graham until she was fifteen years old. Graham was ahead of her time and believed in women's rights to equal education.

At the age of nineteen Anna moved to Ohio to be with her father and his third wife, Susan Livingston Symmes. In 1787 Symmes had been appointed judge of the Northwest Territory, and had also been granted a considerable amount of land to create a settlement on the "north bend" of the Ohio River. In 1795 while her father's house was under construction, Anna and her stepmother went to stay with Anna's sister Maria in Lexington, Kentucky. It was in Kentucky that Anna met William Henry Harrison.

Harrison was twenty-two at the time and already an experienced soldier having fought in Indian wars in the area. Anna and Harrison were married in November of that same year. Judge Symmes didn't approve of the match because he didn't want his daughter to have to live the frontier lifestyle, but he eventually gave his approval. During their marriage Anna gave birth to ten children, six sons and four daughters. Sadly she outlived all of them with the exception of one son, most of them died around their thirties.

Anna was a homemaker wherever her husband's career took them, and she entertained a lot of important people. She entertained not only people like Aaron Burr, but also welcomed some notable Native American leaders. And this wasn't always a pleasant task, among her Native American visitors was Shawnee Chief Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, who believed in the slaughter of white settlers as well as wide-spread war. Since the Indians were such a threat at the time, the Harrison family had to take precautions to try to protect themselves. At their home in Vincennes, Indiana, they even had a fortress-like wall built.

Although Anna didn't want her husband to run for president she still tried to be supportive. When Harrison won the election and set off with some relatives for Virginia, Anna didn't feel up to the journey and stayed in Ohio. She was supposed to meet up with them at the White House in May, until then their daughter-in-law Jane Irwin Harrison filled in for her. Unfortunately Anna never made it to the Washington because as she was packing the news arrived that Harrison had died. Anna continued to live at their home in North Bend until it was destroyed by a fire in 1858. Anna then moved in with her last living child, John Scott Harrison. She later died at the age of eighty-eight on February 25, 1864.