Abigail Fillmore

First Lady

• Born: March 13, 1798
• Birthplace: Sitlwater, New York
• Died: March 30, 1853
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

President:Millard Fillmore 1850–1853

Overview

Abigail Powers Fillmore rose above her humble upbringing and lack of formal schooling to become the caring and cultivated woman who established the permanent White House library. During her tenure, the Executive Mansion became a magnet of culture, attracting authors, entertainers, and statesmen. Abigail supported the political career of her husband, Millard Fillmore, a self-made man as well as a “wife-made man” who owed much of his rise from a log cabin to the White House to his intelligent and capable spouse.

Early Life

Abigail was born on March 13, 1798, in Stillwater, Saratoga County, New York, the youngest child of the Reverend Lemuel Powers, a Baptist clergyman, and Abigail Newland Powers. Her father passed away in 1800, leaving his widow with five sons and two daughters. During Abigail’s childhood, the family resettled in what was then the frontier of Sempronius in central New York. In the library her father bequeathed to his family, Abigail developed a lifelong love of books. At sixteen she became a schoolteacher, one of the few paid occupations open to women of the time and the most common profession among First Ladies before marriage.

Abigail was tall and erect, with light blue eyes and fine auburn hair that fell naturally in ringlets. She met student Millard Fillmore, two years her junior, at the New Hope Academy and encouraged him in a course of study. Millard purchased a subscription to a circulating library that Abigail had probably helped establish near her home in 1817 or 1818.

Marriage and Family

The young couple began their courtship in 1819 but delayed marriage while Millard studied law, which would enable him to support a family. During this period, Abigail continued to teach. In 1824, she founded a select school in Lisle, New York. Abigail and Millard, the first presidential couple to rise from poverty, married on February 5, 1826, in Moravia, New York.

Abigail continued to work for wages after marriage, which was unusual for women at the time, while Millard established his legal practice in East Aurora in western New York. She became the first First Lady to earn a living before and after marriage. On April 25, 1828, she gave birth to their son, Millard Powers Fillmore. In 1830, the family moved to Buffalo, New York, where daughter Mary Abigail Fillmore was born on March 27, 1832.

Abigail lived in Washington, DC, from 1837 to 1842, when Millard was a US congressman. There she listened to House and Senate debates, read newspapers, participated in boardinghouse discussions, and left her calling card at the homes of government officials and foreign dignitaries. While separated from her children, she wrote to them and encouraged them in their lessons.

Presidency and First Ladyship

Vice President Millard Fillmore became president of the United States when Zachary Taylor died in July 1850. Fifty-two-year-old Abigail, who was not in Washington when her husband unexpectedly became president, was not able to close her house and move to Washington until October of that year.

Well read and well informed, Abigail had long exerted a strong influence on her husband and his political career. Millard was heard to say he never took any important step without her counsel and advice. Inconvenienced by the absence of books in the White House—which did not even have a Bible—the new president sought funding for a library. The president and his cabinet needed law books during meetings, and Millard wanted to please Abigail by creating a more habitable home. In Buffalo, the Fillmores had amassed an impressive personal library. The president, a Whig, confronted a contentious Democratic plurality in Congress wary of strengthening the executive branch of government. Initial library legislation failed, but a second attempt in late September 1850, yielded an appropriation from Congress for two thousand dollars.

For the new library, located in what is now the Yellow Oval Room, Abigail ordered mahogany bookcases and light, informal “cottage” furniture. She has been credited with selecting many of the books for the library’s collection, including works of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, several histories, and other standard titles. The library was also a sitting room, where family members would read aloud to one another and greet visitors. From her home in Buffalo, Abigail brought a piano and harp, creating a music room as well as a library. Here her family enjoyed singing old-fashioned melodies and new Stephen Foster songs.

During this period of history, the wife of the president did not take public stands on issues but did act on behalf of specific causes and individuals. In February 1852, Abigail donated money to a Sunday school for poor children in Washington, DC. That same year, she appealed to a physician to examine Helen De Kroyft, the blind novelist, as a personal favor. The doctor, who had been recommended to Abigail by reformer Dorothea Dix, operated on the author and restored her sight. In December, 1852, De Kroyft thanked Mrs. Fillmore in an open and enthusiastic letter published in newspapers. This letter prompted others to write to the Fillmores, requesting information and referrals.

Historically, the quiet and reserved Abigail has been portrayed as a passive invalid who turned over almost all of her hostessing duties to her daughter. However, contemporary reports depict Abigail as an active hostess, present at weekly morning receptions and evening levees whenever her health permitted. When Abigail missed an event, it was often due to an ankle injury, which she sustained first in 1842 and again in 1851. Proud of her husband’s success and reluctant to disappoint the public, she would rest her ankle during the day in order to be able to stand through evening receptions. As a result of her injury, Mrs. Fillmore relied on her daughter, Mary Abigail, to call upon Washington residents.

The Fillmores entertained many prominent guests. In December, 1850, the celebrated diva Jenny Lind, known as the Swedish Nightingale, and her famous manager, P. T. Barnum, visited the White House at the invitation of the Fillmores, who attended both of Lind’s concerts at the National Theater. From late December, 1851, through early January, 1852, Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian revolutionary, was in Washington. He visited the Executive Mansion on more than one occasion and attended a banquet hosted by the Fillmores. In February 1853, the president and Mrs. Fillmore hosted dinners attended by such noted guests as Washington Irving, the American author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, William Thackeray, the British author of Vanity Fair, and president-elect Franklin Pierce.

Abigail attended the Pierce inauguration on a cold and blustery March 4, 1853. She shortly came down with a severe cold that developed into bronchial pneumonia. On March 30, 1853, she died at the Willard Hotel in Washington. Millard mournfully stated, “For twenty-seven years, my entire married life, I was always greeted with a happy smile.” To honor her memory, the new president suspended his cabinet meeting and ordered public offices closed. The Senate promptly adjourned. Abigail’s body was transported back to Buffalo and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Legacy

Abigail was a resourceful and competent woman who might have achieved more as First Lady if not for declining health and a brief White House tenure. Even though Abigail did not long survive her husband’s term of office, the library in the White House has endured. The Lincolns and other presidential families cherished the library, which continued to function as a music room, a parlor, and even as an early “oval office.” During the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, the library was secured in its present location on the ground floor, where it is the first room featured on the White House tour. A historic room in a famous house, the library has served every first family since the Fillmores.

Bibliography

Ellet, Elizabeth F. Court Circles of the Republic: Or, The Beauties and Celebrities of the Nation, Illustrating Life and Society Under Eighteen Presidents, Describing the Social Features of the Successive Administrations from Washington to Grant. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Publishing, 1872.

Fillmore, Millard. Millard Fillmore Papers. Edited by Frank H. Severance. 2 vols. Buffalo, N.Y.: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907.

Hoganson, Kristin. “Abigail (Powers) Fillmore.” In American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy, edited by Lewis L. Gould. New York: Garland, 1996.

Holloway, Laura Carter. The Ladies of the White House: Or, In the Home of the Presidents. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1976.

Scarry, Robert J. Millard Fillmore. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001.

Thacker-Estrada, Elizabeth Lorelei. “The Heart of the Fillmore Presidency: Abigail Powers Fillmore and the White House Library.” White House Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 83-89.

Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth. Social Life in the Early Republic. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1902.

Whitton, Mary Ormsbee. First First Ladies, 1789–1865: A Study of the Wives of the Early Presidents. 1948. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.