Jane Pierce

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Jane Pierce
First Lady of the United States
In office
March 4, 1853 – March 4, 1857
Preceded by Abigail Fillmore
Succeeded by Harriet Lane
Personal details
Born Jane Means Appleton
(1806-03-12)March 12, 1806
Hampton, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, U.S.
Died December 2, 1863(1863-12-02) (aged 57)
Andover, Essex County, Massachusetts, U.S.
Spouse(s) Franklin Pierce
Children Franklin Pierce, Jr.
Franklin "Frank" Robert Pierce
Benjamin Pierce
Signature

Jane Means Appleton Pierce (March 12, 1806 – December 2, 1863), wife of U.S. President Franklin Pierce, was First Lady of the United States from 1853 to 1857.

Early life

Born in Hampton, New Hampshire, the daughter of Reverend Jesse Appleton, a Congregationalist minister, and Elizabeth Means-Appleton, Jane was a petite, frail, shy, melancholy figure. After the death of her father, who had served as president of Bowdoin College not long before Franklin enrolled there, she moved at age 13 into the mansion of her wealthy maternal grandparents in Amherst.

Marriage

How she met Pierce, a young lawyer with political ambitions, is unknown, but her brother-in-law Alpheus S. Packard was one of Pierce's instructors at Bowdoin. Franklin, almost 30, married Jane, 28, on November 19, 1834, at the bride's maternal grandparents' home in Amherst, New Hampshire. The Reverend Silas Aiken, Jane's brother-in-law, conducted the small ceremony. The couple honeymooned six days at the boardinghouse of Sophia Southurt near Washington, D.C..

Franklin Pierce was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives by the time they married and became a U.S. Senator in 1837. Jane hated life in Washington, D.C., and encouraged her husband to resign his Senate seat and return to New Hampshire, which he did in 1842. Service in the Mexican-American War brought him the rank of Brigadier General and local fame as a hero. He returned home safely, and for four more years the Pierces lived quietly at Concord, New Hampshire, in the happiest period of their lives, where they watched their son Benjamin "Benny" grow up.

In 1852, the Democratic Party made Pierce their candidate for president; Jane fainted at the news. When he took her to Newport for a respite, 11-year-old Benny wrote to her: "I hope he won't be elected for I should not like to be at Washington and I know you would not either." But the President-elect convinced his wife that his office would be an asset for Benny's success in life.

The Pierces apparently had genuine affection for each other, but they quarreled often--preferring private life, she opposed his decision to run for president--and gradually they drifted apart. When Benny was killed in a train accident before the swearing-in, Jane believed that God was displeased with her husband's political ambitions.[1] She distanced herself during her husband's presidency, wrapped in melancholia after losing every one of her young children. She never recovered from the tragedy.

First Lady Jane Pierce with her last surviving son, Benjamin Pierce. The child died in 1853 in a train crash, two months before his father was sworn into office as President.

For nearly two years, she remained in the upstairs living quarters of the White House, spending her days writing maudlin letters to her dead son. She left the social chores to her aunt Abby Kent-Means and her close friend Varina Davis, wife of War Secretary Jefferson Davis. Pierce made her first official appearance as First Lady at a New Year's Day reception in 1855 and thereafter served as White House hostess intermittently.

She died of tuberculosis at Andover, Massachusetts, on December 2, 1863. She was buried at Old North Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire; her husband was interred there beside her in 1869.

Children

The Pierces had three children, all of whom died young:

  • Franklin Pierce, Jr. (February 2–4, 1836)
  • Franklin "Frank" Robert Pierce (1839–1843) - died at age four from epidemic typhus.
  • Benjamin Pierce (April 13, 1841-January 16, 1853) - Two months before Franklin Pierce's inauguration as president, a tragedy occurred as the family traveled by train from Andover, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire to attend a family friend's funeral. Minutes after departure, their passenger car broke loose from the train and rolled down an embankment. The only fatality was Benny Pierce.

Notes

  1. ↑ IPL website

References

External links

Honorary titles
Preceded by
Abigail Powers Fillmore		 First Lady of the United States
1853–1857 		Succeeded by
Harriet Lane
Authority control
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