July 24, 2025 • 27 mins
Imagine one of your family members attains the highest political position in American history -- your uncle or sibling becomes the President of the United States! And, as Ben, Noel and Max learn in today's episode: many people were called to play the role of First Lady. Turns out: several people genuinely didn't want the job.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max. Welcome back, Williams,
Welcome back, Welcome back, Welcome back. I love that theme
song for that, mister, Yes, yeah, you nailed it. Who
just nailed that? That's mister Noel Brown. They call me
(00:49):
Ben Bolden. This is our continuing series on the first
Ladies who weren't wives. Please check out our previous episodes
on this. And I'm excited about this one, NOL because,
as our research associate Jeff factor G. Bartlett revealed to
us fairly recently in his research, there's one first lady
(01:13):
who just didn't want the job.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And that's right.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Indeed, he found this one particularly interesting, as did we.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
As Jeff puts it, she was there, but she didn't care. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
She is called by various historians one of American histories
more obscure first ladies. Mary Arthur mice Elroy. She became
the executive hostess in eighteen eighty one because her brother
Chester A. Arthur was a widower, and he only became
(01:53):
president because James A. Garfield was assassinated, so she said, look,
I am not familiar with all the to dos and
the customs and the legacy requirements of the White House
when she got there. She's a middle aged mother of four.
She eventually does assimily, you could call it, and she
(02:17):
becomes known favorably for her New Year's galas and her
open house dinner receptions. She also gets by with a
little help from her friends. I had not heard of
this before. She enlists former first ladies to help her
figure out all the social norms and the fancy cues.
(02:37):
And those first ladies that she crowdsources with are Julia
Tyler and the aforementioned Harriet Lane.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
So Mary Arthur McElroy or maybe McElroy either one, it's fine.
Her brother Chester A.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Arthur, was a widower when he became president in eighteen
eighty one, and his wife Ellen Nell Lewis Herndon, had
passed away sadly from pneumonia in eighteen eighty. Missus McElroy
agreed to become the White House hostess, though I don't
believe she was given the designation of First Lady right
(03:14):
off the rip out of respect for the passing of
Arthur's wife.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, and she was doing everything that a first lady
would do. But you're right, there was a matter of
There was a matter of necessity and a matter of respect.
They needed someone to fill that role during the busy
social season of the winter months, and in spring she
went back to i'll say it, her real family. She
(03:42):
was considered a general favorite at the White House. She
had to assume these social duties just really just to
help out her brothers. So we don't have to say
too much more about her, except one thing that stood
out to all of us. She did not want women
(04:06):
to vote.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, and I thought I misread that when I first
started going through the brief, but it's true, and it
is indeed a bit of a head scratcher.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, yeah, she was. Also she was against temperance, which
makes her an interesting character. She was for the drink,
but against the vote. Yes, for the drink, against the vote.
She thought it was fine for lady and lad alike
to get soused in the White House, but she did
not want the ladies to vote, and it was part
(04:37):
of her extremely active civil life. She was notably active
in the Albany branch of the New York State Association
opposed to women's suffrage or as anyone knows, Missalves.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's where I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I made a little whoopsie when I was reading through it,
But that opposed very much part of this organization's mission.
Although mcelray served as her brother's first lady, she was, not,
of course, as we mentioned, given that formal recognition out
of respect for his wife. However, this did not hurt
her reputation. She was popular. Like he said, she was
a local favorite and quite the hostess with the mostest.
(05:16):
Her duties, however, were somewhat limited as the Arthur administration
wasn't as big on the social season as other administrations,
and this was out of deference to the late President Garfield.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And as we moved through history, we'll jump around a bit,
jump around, jump around.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, see, that's fine, right, We'll.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Introduce you to another reluctant first lady, one who did
not care for the job, and that would be Andrew
Johnson's wife. Okay, Jeff woots it this way. She was there,
but she didn't care. She was also pretty sick, not
in the hip hop sense, and that didn't help. She
(06:04):
eventually passes the torch of first ladyship to their daughter
because she at some point, Eliza Johnson just doesn't want
to do it. She's just fed up with it.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And this is not to mention that his administration was
particularly fraught. Uh even refer to it as our buddies
at history dot Com do as embattled. She however, was
so publicly outwardly shy and kind of weedy and sickly
that she passed along most.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Of her duties.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Again, like you said, to her eldest daughter, Martha Johnson Patterson,
and there was this kind of pall of mourning over
the whole proceedings, especially in the years leading up to
the Civil War and after Lincoln was assassinated. So Martha
kind of adopted, you know, conformed to the times and
(06:59):
took on this of restraint, modesty, and I don't know,
a little bit dourness, you know in the White House.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, because post Civil War, the nation is in mourning.
Many people have lost loved ones, and people are also
not too sure about the stability of the American experiment.
She did choose her words wisely. When she spoke in
public in eighteen sixty five, she said, look, we are
(07:32):
playing folks from Tennessee cold here by a national calamity.
I hope not too much will be expected of us.
She did some things that would speak to their Tennessee heritage.
In addition to managing social receptions, Martha installed milk cows
on the White House lawn. She redecorated the interior, which
(07:55):
seems to happen every time there's a new First Lady.
She got paintings of past presidents into a gallery. One person,
a member of staff, would later describe the President's daughter
as quote the real mistress of the White House. She
made no pretenses of any sort, but was always honest
and direct.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
She was the eldest child of Andrew and Eliza Johnson
and born in Tennessee on October the twenty fifth of
eighteen twenty eight. Her father served in Congress, and she
attended school in Georgetown, occasionally visiting the Polk the administration
the Polk White House. On December thirteenth of eighteen fifty five,
she got married to a gentleman by the name of
David Trotter Patterson, and they had two kiddos, Andrew Johnson
(08:41):
and Mary Bell.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In the preceding years and when her father did become
president somewhat unexpectedly, of course, not someone very much unexpectedly.
After Abraham Lincoln had that really rough night at the
theater that we always talk about in eighteen sixty five,
Martha was able to help out with some of these
first lady duties and responsibilities because her mother was so chronically.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Ill, and a lot of what they're doing at this point,
we could think of it as cleaning up the mess
after the bloody party of the Civil War. The White
House is in disarray, it's wrecked. It was a very
stressful time. Interesting note here and a bit of nepotism.
You'll notice that Martha's last name is Patterson. That's because
(09:31):
she married David Trotter Patterson, who himself was a member
of Congress. He served as a Senator from Tennessee from
eighteen sixty six until eighteen sixty nine, and this was
after Tennessee became the volunteer state became the first Confederate
state to be readmitted to the Union. Senator Patterson's duties
(09:54):
during the trial of Andrew Johnson's impeachment made the process
made the political process and the marriage process difficult for
the couple. Their relationship was fraught again to reuse that word,
because Martha was certain that the charges against her father
(10:16):
were false. By the time the Senate vote fell too
short to convict Johnson on these impeachment charges, the Patterson
family was just tired of the circus we call Washington
d C.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
She didn't what the job.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
She helped clean up she left, which brings us to
another one. I think we're excited to talk about. Imagine
a first lady who felt like she didn't need a
husband at all. This is Rose Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
She was born in New York in eighteen forty six,
the youngest of Richard and Anne Cleveland, the youngest of
nine children, and the sister of future President Grover Cleveland
is a great name who is nine years older than
she was. Cleveland attended school at Houghton Seminary Religious School,
(11:13):
of course, and she taught school in Pennsylvania and New York.
And she was particularly interested and invested in literature.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah. Yeah, So her unmarried older brother becomes potus in
eighteen eighty five President of the United States. Miss Cleveland
moves to Washington, where she's going to serve as first
Lady in practice, the White House hostess. She She spearheads
the traditional receptions, the dinners all that almost said flim
(11:45):
flammery will keep it, all that all that high to do.
And while she's doing this, she also finds time to
pursue her primary love, which is literature. By the time
she's been First Lady for just fifteen months, she's written
two books, one study of George Eliot's poetry and one
called You and I Moral Intellectual and social Culture. She
(12:09):
would much rather be someone who hangs out at a
book club or a salon instead of the you know,
sitting through the mindnus nattering of social gatherings. But when
she was called to serve, she did. Her receptions were
well attended, she was well liked, and she didn't have
to be First Lady for too long because our buddy
(12:33):
Grover gets hitched on June Tewod eighteen eighty six. He
marries Francis Fulsome and she takes over as the first
Lady proper. Everybody looks back on Rose Cleveland and unanimously agrees.
Contemporary accounts as well as the work of later historians.
(12:54):
They all agree that she had very little interest in
becoming the first Lady. She did it mainly to be
a good sister, to help out her older brother. And
she and she and she was so ready to scdattle.
She was probably the one pushing him into marriage, right
(13:15):
because she wanted to leave and write more books.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yep, that is correct. Wasn't she one of the original
Bluestocking into it? Like folks that the whole blue Stocking society,
which I believe was like a literary circle.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was more much more interested, we're
being honest, in pursuing scholarship and reading than she was
in hanging out with the crew of wives and the
wives of foreign dignitaries. I guess the best way to
say it candidly is it sounds like she was really
bored and she would just literally sit through these long
(13:54):
foreign meetups or these you know, these galas, and she
might not talk that much. She would just sit staring
off in the distance, and apparently she would conjugate Greek
verbs in her mind to pass the time.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's like it's a much more intelligent version of like
playing sadoku or like tigging around on your phone, you know.
And during these meetings, she was not present, she was
miles away.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
If there was a phone available at the time. If
smartphones were a thing, she would have been that person
who was on the phone during the conversation, which is,
by the way, huge rude, social social faux pa.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Folks, no question about it. Ben.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
It was during these years that she started to work
on some books, some nonfiction works, George Eliot's Poetry and
Other Studies, which did go on to be published in
eighteen eighty five, as well as You and I, Moral,
Intellectual and Social Culture, which.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was published in eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And here's a little bit of sauce with this historical sauce,
a little bit of us with the historical laudrey. Here
three years after Rose leaves the White House and is
no longer pinch hitting as first Lady, she meets a
wealthy thirty two year old widow named Evangeline Mars Whipple.
(15:15):
As you can tell, that's a name that commonly comes
with money. She's vacationing in Florida and they connect. They
begin exchanging love letters. In April eighteen ninety. We're getting
this from Smithsonian Magazine. By the way, her love letters
are donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. In nineteen sixty
(15:36):
nine by a relative of someone in Evangeline's family, Bishop
Henry Benjamin Whipple, and that's Evangeline's second husband. They didn't
get published until twenty nineteen, in a collection called Precious
and Adored. The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline
Simpson Whipple eighteen ninety to nineteen eighteen. We don't know
(16:00):
what Evangeline wrote to Rose, but we do know that
Rose quotes Evangeline a lot in those letters, and maybe
we could read just an excerpt of what the kind
of stuff Rose wrote to Evangeline.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh yeah, we definitely must. You are mine, she said,
and I am yours, and we are one, and our
lives are one. Henceforth, please God, who can alone separate us?
I am bold to say this, to pray and to
live it? Am I too?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Bold?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Eve? Tell me I shall go to bed Eve with
your letters under my pillow. Okay, got some longing being
expressed here, A little bit of longing.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, and it's classy longing. It's not James Joyce longing.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh God, it's like party princess things.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Side note.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Can I do a quick tangent here, guys? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, tell us what you had a Garfield tangent.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
No, this is actually a tangent about something I texted
you all about. But when I was out West, I
met my my buddy Kev's longtime girlfriend Lizzie for the
first time, and within an hour I was telling her
about the James Joyce love letters.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, you mentioned that.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yes, BARTI Pourrincess Chris.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
But what poetic descriptions of parts?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Very good fart pros, yeah, very good.
Can't deny that.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, but we don't want to leave you without a
dope beat the step two. We have more that we
should get to. But Maxwell, we've got you on the
horn for some tangents. I believe there was also a
Garfield tangent you wanted to share.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Sure, and if you are willing, I have a bunch more,
but I'll rapid fire them, okay, because, as you guys know,
I'm the President's guys, so most importantly I want to stay.
This just looks at someone I've learned while working on
the show that Garfield was a really cool guy. Like
he really was, like his story is cool. He was
like really, like I have a resource brief coming up,
but he's like, you know, people always say, like you
(17:57):
should only elect a president who doesn't want the job.
There's flaws in that philosophy that.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Garfield was actually kind of that, like everyone was throwing
him under the bus for him to become president while
he was trying to get his friend to become president.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
It's kind of.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Sad how he got how he got murdered in assassinated.
On the other hand, Arthur was a very unlikable guy.
Everyone hster Arthur. They his own party didn't put him
out for reelection. Talking about Andrew Johnson, he was a
survivor I believe of a try assassination attempt between him, Lincoln,
and mister Alaska himself, Sue Old, the Secretary of State,
(18:32):
because at the point they only went up three ways,
they took all three of them.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
There will be no president.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Johnson gave him success because he was the only senator
of a succession state to show back up at.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
A work after his state with the country.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And the last one about Johnson and I'll let you go.
It's true fact that we want to know how bad
of a person says. He is one of only two
presidents to not have a known pet.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yes, yes, out of only two, and you can guess
the second one. Imagine, yeah, you there's three now, yeah, okay,
Well be that as it may. The American experiment continues.
Everything you just heard Max say is factually accurate.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
With what exception.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You were not the sole president guy here, mister Williams,
I would say we were all the President's Men.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You are nerds, We certainly are. You see the movie
All the President's Men. I haven't seen it. Hurt's great.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I don't recall
it in full clarity because it's been a while. You
know what I've been really on a kick on recently,
guys is spy films. John leckare just like Roald Dahl
is a fascinating character. He's the guy who wrote the
novels that inspired things like Teinker Taylor, Soldier Spy.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
If you've seen that one for sure, and if you're
into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Ben and I'm not sure if we talked about this
or if you've seen it, but a recent movie that
kind of flew under a lot of people's radars but
was one of my favorite of the year. Black Bag, Yes,
a Steven Soderberg film that is very much in the
realm of a more modern.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Kind of tinker tailor thing.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh I love it. I've been on that kick so
hard for different reasons. You know, you fall in love
with the genre and it continues. And folks, we have
one more story to share with you. This is a
(20:31):
story that kind of makes up for our anti suffragette person.
We want to introduce you to Margaret Wilson, the daughter
of Woodrow Wilson, who actually was a suffragette, Thank goodness.
She did like the idea that all people should be
able to vote.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And Max has real feelings about Woodrow Wilson, if I
remember correctly, also a bit of a turd of a president.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
He is a complicated president. He is he's all gas,
no breaks. Everything with his history is either really good.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Or really awful. I thought you hated his guts for
some reason. I do. I hate him as a person, yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
He's got a touch.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
He was very influential in getting women the right to vote,
which was, if I remember quickly, in the amendments came
after the ability to elect senators, which also is in
the last one hundred plus years we became able to
elect our own senators.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
He was also Yeah, he was also able to get
stuff done. So he was an effective navigator of at
times labyrinthine politics.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Which was even worse at that point in time because
he was a minority president elect because Teddy Roosevelt split
the Republican Party and he got in despite not being
like basically, if it would have been Teddy Roosevelt or
Taster run against him, he wouldn't have got elected. But
since it was both, he didn't get elected.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, because third parties have a troubled history here in
the United States, and good lucky lot, keep it in,
keep it in.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So this.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Person, Margaret Wilson, as we noted, she is not the
spouse of Woodrow Wilson. She is his daughter. She assumes
the role of White House hostess after her mother passes
away in nineteen fourteen. So again we see a lot
of family members having this position foisted upon them due
(22:29):
to tragedy, right, due to a spouse dying. So she
is twenty eight years old picture picture almost like an
Oma Lee esque character. She's known for being free spirited
and she doesn't like authoritarianism. She doesn't love the patriarchal
rules of the day. She only holds the post of
(22:52):
first lady for a few months, and eventually she says, Ugh,
this is too stuffy, this is not for me. I'm
gonna pursue my dream of being a soprano vocalist.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
When President Wilson became engaged to his second wife, Edith
in nineteen fifteen, Margaret stepped aside to follow that very
dream right and began traveling the world across Europe to
perform for the troops in World War One. She also
later worked in advertising and lobbied for several social causes
(23:27):
that were near and dear to her, but she is
best known, most likely for her love of Eastern philosophy
and in Hinduism and meditation and mindfulness. So before she
passed away in nineteen forty four, she got so obsessed
with the work of a particular guru named Shri Aro
Bindu that she moved to India to live in his
(23:50):
commune or astrom.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, and she was very I'm so interested in the
fact that not only was she a social activist with
a lot of daring do for a person or position
at the time, but she also had that madman's streak
where she's working in advertising. That's crazy cool. As of
this point in history, she's only the second first lady
(24:14):
to explicitly support women's suffrage, the first being, of course,
Helen Heron Taft. And with that, folks, we see that
despite the narrative that the United States tells itself, there
are a lot of quote unquote first ladies who were
not in fact spouses. And that's cool, that's kind of
(24:36):
I wouldn't say it's hidden history necessarily, but it is
history that we forget and it's important to remember, especially
as the country continues. Spoiler, folks, we all reside in
the US most of the time. Where as a nation,
we're looking at a world where there may be a
first gentleman, right, We're looking at a world where the
(24:57):
old constraints of marriage and the so called nuclear family
are increasingly being interrogated, and perhaps or I would argue
this is for the betterment of society overall. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
It is one of those things that has kind of
maintained that sort of stuffy, you know, historical tradition kind
of thing. But with a lot of current politics, we
certainly see a lot of tradition getting thrown out the window,
not always for the better.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So I would love to see a world where we
have a first gentleman, Ben.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I'm with you there, Noel, I don't want the job,
but I would also.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You know, you're my first gentleman, you're.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
By first gentleman, and.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Oh god, he's nobody's first anything kid. It's fun.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I also just decide. Note, since we're at the end
of the show, I also wonder what would happen if
there was ever like a polyamorous president elected. A lot
of them were polyamorous in practice but not a name.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
So what if they're like president? Right, we've had those,
We've definitely had us.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
What if there's a thruple? What if a president is
part of a thruple? And then they have to do
they rock scissors?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Paper?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Do they do a Rochambeau for who gets to be
the first lady? H story for another day. Big thanks,
of course to our super producer mister Max Williams. Big
thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Blister, as well as
the legendary Alex Williams who composed.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
This bop indeed, and huge thanks to Christopher Haciotis and
Eves Jeff Coates here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Big big thanks, of course to the rude dudes over
a ridiculous crime. If you dig our show, you'll dig
theirs like a grave kidding.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It is one of the.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Only true crime shows out there that is ninety nine
percent murder free, so check it out. It's fun for
the adults and some of the older kiddos alike. In
the meantime, tune in next week we're going to be
exploring even more ridiculous history. No did you? I think
we talked about it offline, but one of my favorite
(27:09):
recent classic episodes we published was the story of Old
Knife Hands.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Old Knife Hands, the knife test of hands. Did he
have It's true? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
D check that one out. Was he like a mummy
or something?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
What was this? Superhor It was.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
A corpse discovered where his hand had been amputated and
they put a knife on it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, okay, why not? Let's see next ep focus. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max. Welcome back, Williams,
Welcome back, Welcome back, Welcome back. I love that theme
song for that, mister, Yes, yeah, you nailed it. Who
just nailed that? That's mister Noel Brown. They call me
(00:49):
Ben Bolden. This is our continuing series on the first
Ladies who weren't wives. Please check out our previous episodes
on this. And I'm excited about this one, NOL because,
as our research associate Jeff factor G. Bartlett revealed to
us fairly recently in his research, there's one first lady
(01:13):
who just didn't want the job.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
And that's right.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Indeed, he found this one particularly interesting, as did we.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
As Jeff puts it, she was there, but she didn't care. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
She is called by various historians one of American histories
more obscure first ladies. Mary Arthur mice Elroy. She became
the executive hostess in eighteen eighty one because her brother
Chester A. Arthur was a widower, and he only became
(01:53):
president because James A. Garfield was assassinated, so she said, look,
I am not familiar with all the to dos and
the customs and the legacy requirements of the White House
when she got there. She's a middle aged mother of four.
She eventually does assimily, you could call it, and she
(02:17):
becomes known favorably for her New Year's galas and her
open house dinner receptions. She also gets by with a
little help from her friends. I had not heard of
this before. She enlists former first ladies to help her
figure out all the social norms and the fancy cues.
(02:37):
And those first ladies that she crowdsources with are Julia
Tyler and the aforementioned Harriet Lane.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
So Mary Arthur McElroy or maybe McElroy either one, it's fine.
Her brother Chester A.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Arthur, was a widower when he became president in eighteen
eighty one, and his wife Ellen Nell Lewis Herndon, had
passed away sadly from pneumonia in eighteen eighty. Missus McElroy
agreed to become the White House hostess, though I don't
believe she was given the designation of First Lady right
(03:14):
off the rip out of respect for the passing of
Arthur's wife.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, and she was doing everything that a first lady
would do. But you're right, there was a matter of
There was a matter of necessity and a matter of respect.
They needed someone to fill that role during the busy
social season of the winter months, and in spring she
went back to i'll say it, her real family. She
(03:42):
was considered a general favorite at the White House. She
had to assume these social duties just really just to
help out her brothers. So we don't have to say
too much more about her, except one thing that stood
out to all of us. She did not want women
(04:06):
to vote.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, and I thought I misread that when I first
started going through the brief, but it's true, and it
is indeed a bit of a head scratcher.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, yeah, she was. Also she was against temperance, which
makes her an interesting character. She was for the drink,
but against the vote. Yes, for the drink, against the vote.
She thought it was fine for lady and lad alike
to get soused in the White House, but she did
not want the ladies to vote, and it was part
(04:37):
of her extremely active civil life. She was notably active
in the Albany branch of the New York State Association
opposed to women's suffrage or as anyone knows, Missalves.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That's where I thought.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
I made a little whoopsie when I was reading through it,
But that opposed very much part of this organization's mission.
Although mcelray served as her brother's first lady, she was, not,
of course, as we mentioned, given that formal recognition out
of respect for his wife. However, this did not hurt
her reputation. She was popular. Like he said, she was
a local favorite and quite the hostess with the mostest.
(05:16):
Her duties, however, were somewhat limited as the Arthur administration
wasn't as big on the social season as other administrations,
and this was out of deference to the late President Garfield.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And as we moved through history, we'll jump around a bit,
jump around, jump around.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, see, that's fine, right, We'll.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Introduce you to another reluctant first lady, one who did
not care for the job, and that would be Andrew
Johnson's wife. Okay, Jeff woots it this way. She was there,
but she didn't care. She was also pretty sick, not
in the hip hop sense, and that didn't help. She
(06:04):
eventually passes the torch of first ladyship to their daughter
because she at some point, Eliza Johnson just doesn't want
to do it. She's just fed up with it.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
And this is not to mention that his administration was
particularly fraught. Uh even refer to it as our buddies
at history dot Com do as embattled. She however, was
so publicly outwardly shy and kind of weedy and sickly
that she passed along most.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Of her duties.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Again, like you said, to her eldest daughter, Martha Johnson Patterson,
and there was this kind of pall of mourning over
the whole proceedings, especially in the years leading up to
the Civil War and after Lincoln was assassinated. So Martha
kind of adopted, you know, conformed to the times and
(06:59):
took on this of restraint, modesty, and I don't know,
a little bit dourness, you know in the White House.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, because post Civil War, the nation is in mourning.
Many people have lost loved ones, and people are also
not too sure about the stability of the American experiment.
She did choose her words wisely. When she spoke in
public in eighteen sixty five, she said, look, we are
(07:32):
playing folks from Tennessee cold here by a national calamity.
I hope not too much will be expected of us.
She did some things that would speak to their Tennessee heritage.
In addition to managing social receptions, Martha installed milk cows
on the White House lawn. She redecorated the interior, which
(07:55):
seems to happen every time there's a new First Lady.
She got paintings of past presidents into a gallery. One person,
a member of staff, would later describe the President's daughter
as quote the real mistress of the White House. She
made no pretenses of any sort, but was always honest
and direct.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
She was the eldest child of Andrew and Eliza Johnson
and born in Tennessee on October the twenty fifth of
eighteen twenty eight. Her father served in Congress, and she
attended school in Georgetown, occasionally visiting the Polk the administration
the Polk White House. On December thirteenth of eighteen fifty five,
she got married to a gentleman by the name of
David Trotter Patterson, and they had two kiddos, Andrew Johnson
(08:41):
and Mary Bell.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In the preceding years and when her father did become
president somewhat unexpectedly, of course, not someone very much unexpectedly.
After Abraham Lincoln had that really rough night at the
theater that we always talk about in eighteen sixty five,
Martha was able to help out with some of these
first lady duties and responsibilities because her mother was so chronically.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Ill, and a lot of what they're doing at this point,
we could think of it as cleaning up the mess
after the bloody party of the Civil War. The White
House is in disarray, it's wrecked. It was a very
stressful time. Interesting note here and a bit of nepotism.
You'll notice that Martha's last name is Patterson. That's because
(09:31):
she married David Trotter Patterson, who himself was a member
of Congress. He served as a Senator from Tennessee from
eighteen sixty six until eighteen sixty nine, and this was
after Tennessee became the volunteer state became the first Confederate
state to be readmitted to the Union. Senator Patterson's duties
(09:54):
during the trial of Andrew Johnson's impeachment made the process
made the political process and the marriage process difficult for
the couple. Their relationship was fraught again to reuse that word,
because Martha was certain that the charges against her father
(10:16):
were false. By the time the Senate vote fell too
short to convict Johnson on these impeachment charges, the Patterson
family was just tired of the circus we call Washington
d C.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
She didn't what the job.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
She helped clean up she left, which brings us to
another one. I think we're excited to talk about. Imagine
a first lady who felt like she didn't need a
husband at all. This is Rose Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
She was born in New York in eighteen forty six,
the youngest of Richard and Anne Cleveland, the youngest of
nine children, and the sister of future President Grover Cleveland
is a great name who is nine years older than
she was. Cleveland attended school at Houghton Seminary Religious School,
(11:13):
of course, and she taught school in Pennsylvania and New York.
And she was particularly interested and invested in literature.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah. Yeah, So her unmarried older brother becomes potus in
eighteen eighty five President of the United States. Miss Cleveland
moves to Washington, where she's going to serve as first
Lady in practice, the White House hostess. She She spearheads
the traditional receptions, the dinners all that almost said flim
(11:45):
flammery will keep it, all that all that high to do.
And while she's doing this, she also finds time to
pursue her primary love, which is literature. By the time
she's been First Lady for just fifteen months, she's written
two books, one study of George Eliot's poetry and one
called You and I Moral Intellectual and social Culture. She
(12:09):
would much rather be someone who hangs out at a
book club or a salon instead of the you know,
sitting through the mindnus nattering of social gatherings. But when
she was called to serve, she did. Her receptions were
well attended, she was well liked, and she didn't have
to be First Lady for too long because our buddy
(12:33):
Grover gets hitched on June Tewod eighteen eighty six. He
marries Francis Fulsome and she takes over as the first
Lady proper. Everybody looks back on Rose Cleveland and unanimously agrees.
Contemporary accounts as well as the work of later historians.
(12:54):
They all agree that she had very little interest in
becoming the first Lady. She did it mainly to be
a good sister, to help out her older brother. And
she and she and she was so ready to scdattle.
She was probably the one pushing him into marriage, right
(13:15):
because she wanted to leave and write more books.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yep, that is correct. Wasn't she one of the original
Bluestocking into it? Like folks that the whole blue Stocking society,
which I believe was like a literary circle.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was more much more interested, we're
being honest, in pursuing scholarship and reading than she was
in hanging out with the crew of wives and the
wives of foreign dignitaries. I guess the best way to
say it candidly is it sounds like she was really
bored and she would just literally sit through these long
(13:54):
foreign meetups or these you know, these galas, and she
might not talk that much. She would just sit staring
off in the distance, and apparently she would conjugate Greek
verbs in her mind to pass the time.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's like it's a much more intelligent version of like
playing sadoku or like tigging around on your phone, you know.
And during these meetings, she was not present, she was
miles away.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
If there was a phone available at the time. If
smartphones were a thing, she would have been that person
who was on the phone during the conversation, which is,
by the way, huge rude, social social faux pa.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Folks, no question about it. Ben.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
It was during these years that she started to work
on some books, some nonfiction works, George Eliot's Poetry and
Other Studies, which did go on to be published in
eighteen eighty five, as well as You and I, Moral,
Intellectual and Social Culture, which.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was published in eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And here's a little bit of sauce with this historical sauce,
a little bit of us with the historical laudrey. Here
three years after Rose leaves the White House and is
no longer pinch hitting as first Lady, she meets a
wealthy thirty two year old widow named Evangeline Mars Whipple.
(15:15):
As you can tell, that's a name that commonly comes
with money. She's vacationing in Florida and they connect. They
begin exchanging love letters. In April eighteen ninety. We're getting
this from Smithsonian Magazine. By the way, her love letters
are donated to the Minnesota Historical Society. In nineteen sixty
(15:36):
nine by a relative of someone in Evangeline's family, Bishop
Henry Benjamin Whipple, and that's Evangeline's second husband. They didn't
get published until twenty nineteen, in a collection called Precious
and Adored. The Love Letters of Rose Cleveland and Evangeline
Simpson Whipple eighteen ninety to nineteen eighteen. We don't know
(16:00):
what Evangeline wrote to Rose, but we do know that
Rose quotes Evangeline a lot in those letters, and maybe
we could read just an excerpt of what the kind
of stuff Rose wrote to Evangeline.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Oh yeah, we definitely must. You are mine, she said,
and I am yours, and we are one, and our
lives are one. Henceforth, please God, who can alone separate us?
I am bold to say this, to pray and to
live it? Am I too?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Bold?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Eve? Tell me I shall go to bed Eve with
your letters under my pillow. Okay, got some longing being
expressed here, A little bit of longing.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, and it's classy longing. It's not James Joyce longing.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Oh God, it's like party princess things.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Side note.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Can I do a quick tangent here, guys? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, tell us what you had a Garfield tangent.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
No, this is actually a tangent about something I texted
you all about. But when I was out West, I
met my my buddy Kev's longtime girlfriend Lizzie for the
first time, and within an hour I was telling her
about the James Joyce love letters.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, you mentioned that.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yes, BARTI Pourrincess Chris.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
But what poetic descriptions of parts?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Very good fart pros, yeah, very good.
Can't deny that.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, but we don't want to leave you without a
dope beat the step two. We have more that we
should get to. But Maxwell, we've got you on the
horn for some tangents. I believe there was also a
Garfield tangent you wanted to share.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Sure, and if you are willing, I have a bunch more,
but I'll rapid fire them, okay, because, as you guys know,
I'm the President's guys, so most importantly I want to stay.
This just looks at someone I've learned while working on
the show that Garfield was a really cool guy. Like
he really was, like his story is cool. He was
like really, like I have a resource brief coming up,
but he's like, you know, people always say, like you
(17:57):
should only elect a president who doesn't want the job.
There's flaws in that philosophy that.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Garfield was actually kind of that, like everyone was throwing
him under the bus for him to become president while
he was trying to get his friend to become president.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
It's kind of.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Sad how he got how he got murdered in assassinated.
On the other hand, Arthur was a very unlikable guy.
Everyone hster Arthur. They his own party didn't put him
out for reelection. Talking about Andrew Johnson, he was a
survivor I believe of a try assassination attempt between him, Lincoln,
and mister Alaska himself, Sue Old, the Secretary of State,
(18:32):
because at the point they only went up three ways,
they took all three of them.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
There will be no president.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Johnson gave him success because he was the only senator
of a succession state to show back up at.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
A work after his state with the country.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And the last one about Johnson and I'll let you go.
It's true fact that we want to know how bad
of a person says. He is one of only two
presidents to not have a known pet.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yes, yes, out of only two, and you can guess
the second one. Imagine, yeah, you there's three now, yeah, okay,
Well be that as it may. The American experiment continues.
Everything you just heard Max say is factually accurate.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
With what exception.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You were not the sole president guy here, mister Williams,
I would say we were all the President's Men.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
You are nerds, We certainly are. You see the movie
All the President's Men. I haven't seen it. Hurt's great.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Yeah, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I don't recall
it in full clarity because it's been a while. You
know what I've been really on a kick on recently,
guys is spy films. John leckare just like Roald Dahl
is a fascinating character. He's the guy who wrote the
novels that inspired things like Teinker Taylor, Soldier Spy.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
If you've seen that one for sure, and if you're
into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Ben and I'm not sure if we talked about this
or if you've seen it, but a recent movie that
kind of flew under a lot of people's radars but
was one of my favorite of the year. Black Bag, Yes,
a Steven Soderberg film that is very much in the
realm of a more modern.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Kind of tinker tailor thing.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Oh I love it. I've been on that kick so
hard for different reasons. You know, you fall in love
with the genre and it continues. And folks, we have
one more story to share with you. This is a
(20:31):
story that kind of makes up for our anti suffragette person.
We want to introduce you to Margaret Wilson, the daughter
of Woodrow Wilson, who actually was a suffragette, Thank goodness.
She did like the idea that all people should be
able to vote.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
And Max has real feelings about Woodrow Wilson, if I
remember correctly, also a bit of a turd of a president.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
He is a complicated president. He is he's all gas,
no breaks. Everything with his history is either really good.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Or really awful. I thought you hated his guts for
some reason. I do. I hate him as a person, yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
He's got a touch.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
He was very influential in getting women the right to vote,
which was, if I remember quickly, in the amendments came
after the ability to elect senators, which also is in
the last one hundred plus years we became able to
elect our own senators.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
He was also Yeah, he was also able to get
stuff done. So he was an effective navigator of at
times labyrinthine politics.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Which was even worse at that point in time because
he was a minority president elect because Teddy Roosevelt split
the Republican Party and he got in despite not being
like basically, if it would have been Teddy Roosevelt or
Taster run against him, he wouldn't have got elected. But
since it was both, he didn't get elected.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, because third parties have a troubled history here in
the United States, and good lucky lot, keep it in,
keep it in.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
So this.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Person, Margaret Wilson, as we noted, she is not the
spouse of Woodrow Wilson. She is his daughter. She assumes
the role of White House hostess after her mother passes
away in nineteen fourteen. So again we see a lot
of family members having this position foisted upon them due
(22:29):
to tragedy, right, due to a spouse dying. So she
is twenty eight years old picture picture almost like an
Oma Lee esque character. She's known for being free spirited
and she doesn't like authoritarianism. She doesn't love the patriarchal
rules of the day. She only holds the post of
(22:52):
first lady for a few months, and eventually she says, Ugh,
this is too stuffy, this is not for me. I'm
gonna pursue my dream of being a soprano vocalist.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
When President Wilson became engaged to his second wife, Edith
in nineteen fifteen, Margaret stepped aside to follow that very
dream right and began traveling the world across Europe to
perform for the troops in World War One. She also
later worked in advertising and lobbied for several social causes
(23:27):
that were near and dear to her, but she is
best known, most likely for her love of Eastern philosophy
and in Hinduism and meditation and mindfulness. So before she
passed away in nineteen forty four, she got so obsessed
with the work of a particular guru named Shri Aro
Bindu that she moved to India to live in his
(23:50):
commune or astrom.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yeah, and she was very I'm so interested in the
fact that not only was she a social activist with
a lot of daring do for a person or position
at the time, but she also had that madman's streak
where she's working in advertising. That's crazy cool. As of
this point in history, she's only the second first lady
(24:14):
to explicitly support women's suffrage, the first being, of course,
Helen Heron Taft. And with that, folks, we see that
despite the narrative that the United States tells itself, there
are a lot of quote unquote first ladies who were
not in fact spouses. And that's cool, that's kind of
(24:36):
I wouldn't say it's hidden history necessarily, but it is
history that we forget and it's important to remember, especially
as the country continues. Spoiler, folks, we all reside in
the US most of the time. Where as a nation,
we're looking at a world where there may be a
first gentleman, right, We're looking at a world where the
(24:57):
old constraints of marriage and the so called nuclear family
are increasingly being interrogated, and perhaps or I would argue
this is for the betterment of society overall. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
It is one of those things that has kind of
maintained that sort of stuffy, you know, historical tradition kind
of thing. But with a lot of current politics, we
certainly see a lot of tradition getting thrown out the window,
not always for the better.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So I would love to see a world where we
have a first gentleman, Ben.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I'm with you there, Noel, I don't want the job,
but I would also.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You know, you're my first gentleman, you're.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
By first gentleman, and.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Oh god, he's nobody's first anything kid. It's fun.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I also just decide. Note, since we're at the end
of the show, I also wonder what would happen if
there was ever like a polyamorous president elected. A lot
of them were polyamorous in practice but not a name.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
So what if they're like president? Right, we've had those,
We've definitely had us.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
What if there's a thruple? What if a president is
part of a thruple? And then they have to do
they rock scissors?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Paper?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Do they do a Rochambeau for who gets to be
the first lady? H story for another day. Big thanks,
of course to our super producer mister Max Williams. Big
thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Blister, as well as
the legendary Alex Williams who composed.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
This bop indeed, and huge thanks to Christopher Haciotis and
Eves Jeff Coates here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Big big thanks, of course to the rude dudes over
a ridiculous crime. If you dig our show, you'll dig
theirs like a grave kidding.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It is one of the.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Only true crime shows out there that is ninety nine
percent murder free, so check it out. It's fun for
the adults and some of the older kiddos alike. In
the meantime, tune in next week we're going to be
exploring even more ridiculous history. No did you? I think
we talked about it offline, but one of my favorite
(27:09):
recent classic episodes we published was the story of Old
Knife Hands.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Old Knife Hands, the knife test of hands. Did he
have It's true? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
D check that one out. Was he like a mummy
or something?
Speaker 2 (27:23):
What was this? Superhor It was.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
A corpse discovered where his hand had been amputated and
they put a knife on it.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, okay, why not? Let's see next ep focus. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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