For instance, there were ancestral ties between the Spencer family of Bedfordshire and the Washington family; a Spencer secured the land grant later purchased by the Washingtons, where they built their Mount Vernon home. These sorts of ties were common in the early colony, as families shuttled back and forth between England and Virginia, maintaining their connections with the mother country and with each other. A thin network of increasingly interrelated families made up the planter elite and held power in colonial Virginia. The ties among Virginia families were based on marriage. In a pre-Revolutionary War economy dependent on the production of tobacco as a commodity crop, the ownership of the best land was tightly controlled.
It often passed between families of corresponding social rank. The Virginia economy was based on slave labor as the colony became a slave society. The landed gentry could keep tight rein on political power, which passed in somewhat orderly fashion from family to family. In the more modern mercantile economy of the north, social mobility became more prominent.
The power of the elite was muted by newcomers who gained wealth in the market economy. According to Mattaponi and Patawomeck tradition, Pocahontas was previously married to a Patawomeck weroance , Kocoum, who was murdered by Englishmen when Samuel Argall abducted her on April 13, Rolfe had become prominent and wealthy as the first to successfully develop an export cash crop for the Colony with new varieties of tobacco. Their only child, Thomas Rolfe , was born on January 30, He married and had a family: Pocahontas was much celebrated in London where she was welcomed with great ceremony at the Royal Court.
She died young but became legendary as the first Indian from Virginia to become Christian, marry an Englishman, and have a known child from such a marriage. There were no doubt mixed-race children born to lower-class colonists and Algonquian women, although they may have been neither married nor Christian. She became an important symbol of friendly Native American-English relations of the Jamestown colony. By virtue of many fictional accounts, her marriage was romanticized and became part of the mythology of early American history.
Families often used surnames as given names; for instance, incorporating a mother's maiden name as a "middle name", to document their ancestry. In , the Jamestown Exposition was held near Norfolk to celebrate the tricentennial of the arrival of the first English colonists and the founding of Jamestown. Preservation Virginia , formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, was founded in Williamsburg in to memorialize Virginia history.
She was self-educated and became a leader in educational reform in Richmond. She organized the Richmond Education Association, founded a training school for kindergarten teachers. She promoted vocational education and helped organize the Instructive Visiting Nurses' Association. She promoted programs regardless of race. After she was a leader in the state's woman's suffrage movement. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the hereditary society, see Order of the First Families of Virginia. First Families of Virginia. Retrieved February 11, From Dominion to Republic, — The American Civil War.
First Family of the United States
Archived from the original PDF on July 14, Retrieved July 6, Family of Zachary Taylor. As a semi-invalid, the First Lady became a recluse and remained in seclusion on the second floor of the Executive Residence, leaving the duties of official hostess to her daughter Mary Elizabeth. They were the last family to own slaves in the White House from to Family of Millard Fillmore. Millard and Abigail Fillmore Millard , and Mary.
During the presidential inauguration for her husband's successor Franklin Pierce in , the First Lady caught a cold and the next day came down with a fever. Abigail Fillmore developed pneumonia and died weeks later, on March 30, Throughout much of the President's term in office and due to the First Lady's illness, their daughter Mary was hostess at many White House functions from to Family of Franklin Pierce.
Franklin and Jane Pierce. Pierce's son Benjamin was killed in a train wreck two months before Pierce's inauguration. Jane Pierce arrived at the White house months later and spent most of their tenure in her room, writing letters to her dead son. Family of James Buchanan. The President never married or had children. Family of Abraham Lincoln. In , Willie, after riding his pony in bad weather, became ill.
First Families of Funny
His condition fluctuated from day to day. The most likely cause of the illness was typhoid fever , contracted from contaminated drinking water. On February 20, , the young boy died. The President and First Lady's second son, Edward , died earlier in , most likely from a wasting disease called medullary thyroid cancer as part of the genetic cancer syndrome - multiple endocrine neoplasia , type 2B - that his father and two of his brothers may have shared.
Navigation menu
In , their son Tad died at the age of 18 due to tuberculosis. Of the President and First Lady's four children, only Robert lived into adulthood; he died in Throughout the President's term in office, the First Lady suffered from severe headaches. Dealing with the death of her son Willie in , as well as the deaths of siblings killed in the American Civil War , difficult bouts of mourning, especially after Willie's death, led to protracted depression. During her years at the White House, the First Lady suffered a severe head injury in a carriage accident, thought to be an assassination attempt aimed at the President, who was not with her at the time.
In addition to depression, the First Lady suffered from irrational, sometimes public outbursts. Family of Andrew Johnson. Family of Ulysses S. The Grant family was the last slave holding family to live in the White House. Grant owned a slave during the Civil War but freed the slave soon after. Family of Rutherford B.
Family of James Garfield. Family of Chester A. Arthur Chester II and Ellen. Chester Arthur's wife, Nell , died in November ; he succeeded to the presidency in September Family of Grover Cleveland. Grover and Frances Cleveland m. Frances Cleveland was the youngest of the first ladies. She and Cleveland married on June 2, , when she was 21 years old. When she and Cleveland departed the White House, she told the staff 'take careof everything as we would like to see it just the way it is when we return, four years from today'.
Family of Benjamin Harrison. Benjamin and Caroline Harrison Russell and Mary. Esther Cleveland was born in , she was the first and only child of a president to be born in the White House. Family of William McKinley. William and Ida McKinley. Family of Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore and Edith Roosevelt Theodore Jr. Alice was another child from the President's previous marriage to his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt , who died in due to childbirth complications and the disease known as Bright's disease.
The President's fifth cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt , would become the 32nd President of the United States in Family of William Howard Taft. After the First Lady suffered a stroke in , daughter Helen moved into the Executive Residence and helped her mother to regain body movement and speech. The youngest son, Charles, was only 12 years old when he moved into the Executive Residence, upon his father's election as President. Family of Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Wilson d. On January 17, , Jessie gave birth to a son, Francis B. There were two First Ladies during the Wilson Administration. The President's first wife, Ellen, died at the White House on August 6, due to complications of Bright's disease. The following year, the President married his second wife, Edith. At the time of her mother's death in , the oldest daughter Margaret served the role as First Lady until her father remarried in Family of Warren G.
Warren and Florence Harding. The President never had children with his wife but had an illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing , with another woman, Nan Britton. In a previous marriage, the First Lady had a son named Marshall Eugene DeWolfe who died from complications of alcoholism and tuberculosis on January 1, , at the age of Family of Calvin Coolidge. Their son John who lived until , married the daughter of Connecticut governor John H. Family of Herbert Hoover. Family of Franklin D. In , the President's oldest son James moved into the Executive Residence and served as an advisor and private secretary in the West Wing.
At the President's request, his daughter Anna moved into the Executive Residence in to serve as an assistant to the President and as White House hostess during the First Lady's frequent absences. A fifth son, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.
III , was born on March 18, and died approximately eight months later on November 7, Family of Harry S. Harry and Bess Truman and Margaret. Between the years and , the First Family resided at Blair House , the official guest quarters of foreign heads of state and government located near Lafayette Park , while the White House underwent a complete interior restoration.
Family of Dwight D. Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower and John. Eisenhower posed for this portrait on their 39th wedding anniversary at their farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The President and First Lady's eldest son, Doud , died of scarlet fever in Family of John F. The President and First Lady's first-born daughter, Arabella, was delivered as a stillborn in The child died two days later due to hyaline membrane disease.
In , John Jr. Family of Lyndon B. Robb , a former Governor of Virginia and two-term U.
CoraWeb - First Families Database
Family of Richard Nixon. Richard and Pat Nixon Tricia and Julie. One of the most thrilling occurrences during the President's administration was the marriage of his daughter Tricia to Edward Cox , who were wed in a fairytale ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House on June 12, Family of Gerald Ford. Family of Jimmy Carter. Their daughter Amy was the first true child to live in the White House since the Kennedy children lived there between and Family of Ronald Reagan.
Maureen and Michael were two of the President's children from his first marriage to Hollywood actress Jane Wyman while Patti and Ron were the President's two youngest children from his second marriage to Nancy Reagan. Family of George H.