Lucy Hayes

First Lady

• Born: August 28, 1831
• Birthplace: Chillicothe, Ohio
• Died: June 25, 1889
• Place of death: Fremont, Ohio

President:Rutherford B. Hayes 1877-1881

Overview

Lucy Hayes was the first wife of a president to be called First Lady on a frequent basis. The troops commanded by her husband, Rutherford B. Hayes, during the Civil War referred to her as Mother of the Regiment because of the care and concern she showed to all soldiers. During her White House years, she was known by her many admirers for her generosity and charity. To those who disagreed with the Hayeses’ stand on temperance, she was known as Lemonade Lucy.

Early Life

The daughter born to Dr. James Webb and his wife, Maria Cook Webb, on August 28, 1831, was christened for her paternal grandmother, Lucy Ware Webb. The Webbs had two older children, Joseph, aged four, and James, aged three. Born in the old capital of Ohio, Chillicothe, Lucy’s father had a sizable practice and although he had served in the War of 1812, he preferred a medical career to a military one. Though born a southerner, Dr. Webb was an avowed antislavery man, and Maria Webb, whose family came from New England, was equally so.

In the terribly hot summer of 1833, Dr. Webb set off for Kentucky to free the fifteen to twenty slaves left to him by his aunt in her will, but as he arrived a cholera epidemic was sweeping through the region. Working long hours to save the victims, Dr. Webb, weakened and overworked, contracted the disease. As did his parents and brother, Dr. Webb died in the epidemic, before his wife could reach him.

When questioned about the poverty she faced, Maria Webb shrugged. When again asked why she did not sell the slaves her husband had intended to free before his death, Maria replied, “I will take in washing to support my family before I would take money for the sale of a human being.” This made a deep impression on Lucy; for the rest of her life, she had a deep respect and love for her mother and the memory of her father.

Like many women of the time, Maria Webb took in boarders or cleaned other people’s homes for a living. Staying on in Chillicothe, Maria leaned heavily on her stern but loving father, Isaac Cook, a former state legislator and supporter of public schools. Lucy loved her grandfather and often visited his farm, Willow Branch. His firm Methodist faith was to be a lifelong influence on Lucy; when he asked her and her brothers to take a temperance oath, they complied. Lucy often went riding with her brothers and cousins, climbed trees, and helped her mother with the household chores.

Maria, like her father, believed in education for her daughter as well as her sons. As both Joe and James would one day be doctors like their father, Maria saw to it that Lucy received a good, thorough education. Lucy attended a variety of local schools, including the Chillicothe Female School, an elementary school. One of her early teachers, Miss Baskerville, did not believe in recess or in any form of levity during the school day. Aside from a short lunch break, Lucy and her classmates spent all day at their desks. Once, when Lucy brought her cousin Joe to school as her guest, Miss Baskerville got angry with him for some minor infraction and proceeded to whip him. Lucy flew at her in a rage, yelling, “I brought him to school to visit and you shan’t touch him!” Miss Baskerville, amazed at the normally cheerful Lucy’s rage, said nothing.

Another time at school, some of the girls were cruelly picking on two German-speaking girls, making fun of their dress and speech. It was Lucy who took the newcomers aside, brought out her dolls, and showed the girls the clothes she had made for the dolls. Thus, Lucy’s generous and cheerful nature crossed the barriers of both language and culture.

All her life, Lucy loved reading but disliked writing and arithmetic. (One time, as a young housewife, Lucy attempted to keep the household accounts, but after reading them, her husband took over that duty himself.)

In 1844 the Webb family moved to Delaware, Ohio, where Maria saw her two sons into the Methodist school, today known as Ohio Wesleyan University, where they began their medical training. She enrolled Lucy in the preparatory department, extending the education her daughter had received in Chillicothe. Intent on furthering her education, Lucy took courses at the college level and got several credits while there. It was here that Rutherford B. Hayes saw her for the first time and in his diary, which he kept all his life, noted Lucy’s “bright eyes” and her sunny nature. He was twenty-four to her fifteen, and romance would have to wait.

It was shortly after this that Maria, not wanting her daughter to be swept off into an early marriage, moved Lucy to the “Queen City” of the Ohio River, Cincinnati. Lucy enrolled in the Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College, one of the first colleges to grant degrees to women. Along with about four hundred other women, Lucy studied, wrote, flirted, and enjoyed herself. Pretty, with black hair, parted “Madonna-like” in the middle, sparkling hazel eyes, and a merry laugh, she was well liked. In 1850, in spite of her dislike of writing, she was elected to the exclusive Young Ladies’ Lyceum. There she studied rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, literature, trigonometry, and the sciences. She had to write long essays every two weeks, which sorely tried her patience, but she nonetheless did well in school. She also became an excellent speaker, which stood her in good stead when she gave speeches for the Methodist Missionary Society toward the end of her life. Upon Lucy’s graduation from college, she delivered a dissertation on the effects of Christianity on the economy.

The day of her election to the Young Ladies’ Lyceum, Lucy saw Rutherford again. His mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes, and Maria Webb had known each other in Delaware and had both secretly hoped their children would fall in love. At the wedding of a friend that fall, Rutherford noted Lucy’s beauty and felt such a peculiar feeling in his chest that he gave her the surprise from the wedding cake: a gold ring. She kept it always and used it as her engagement ring when he proposed to her the next summer. Upon their engagement, she felt that she was “too light” a personality for his more serious nature, but they shared a love of life as well as great common sense. Above all, each adored the other. Rutherford’s only complaint, then and later, was Lucy’s slowness to answer letters. He wrote two to her one, which was exactly what she suggested he do. At this time his sister, Fanny Platt, with whom he had always had a close relationship, also began a correspondence with Lucy, leading to a close friendship.

Marriage and Family

At two o’clock in the afternoon of December 30, 1852, in the parlor of the Webb home in Cincinnati, Lucy Ware Webb became Mrs. Rutherford Birchard Hayes. She was twenty-one years old; he was thirty. It would prove to be an unusually happy and contented marriage. Lucy’s wedding dress, which can still be seen at Spiegel Grove, was of white brocade satin with gold fringe and was, as would become her trademark later in life, high in the neck and modest in cut. At five in the afternoon, the young couple boarded a train for Columbus, where Rutherford was to argue a case before the Ohio Supreme Court. They then spent a monthlong honeymoon staying with Fanny, Rutherford’s sister.

The first years of the Hayeses’ marriage were spent in Cincinnati. Like many couples in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, they would move a number of times before settling in a permanent home. Part of their early years were spent in Columbus, but they stayed primarily in Cincinnati, where they were close to not only Mother Webb but Mother Hayes as well. In November, 1853, Lucy gave birth to the first of her eight children, a son. Both Lucy and Rutherford wanted to wait to name their child, thinking that the child’s personality would help them determine a name. This greatly upset Mother Hayes, who was never known for her patience or sense of humor, so Lucy named the baby Puds. Of course, this was not the final name; after several other ideas, they settled on Birchard Austin, or Birchie for short.

Shortly after Birchie’s birth, the Hayeses bought their first home; as Lucy had forgotten to pack the silverware, they all ended up using little Birchie’s child-size knife to cut their food. In March, 1856, another son was born and christened James Webb, but his parents found the name did not suit him and changed it to Webb Cook Hayes. Though Lucy loved all of her children, her secret favorite was Webb, who later called his mother “my best friend” (when he was not referring to her as “the old lady,” a nickname she often called herself). Webb proved to be an engaging child but was stubborn in his refusal to learn his letters. He would climb on his mother’s lap, smile, cajole, whine—anything but learn to read. Ironically, he was later to be his father’s White House secretary.

These years before the Civil War were difficult ones for presidents Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan and the people of the United States. It was Lucy’s strong antislavery views that changed Rutherford’s lukewarm stand on abolition and issues associated with it. Her influence can be seen in his taking cases involving runaway slaves who had crossed the Ohio River into Cincinnati. As his fame grew in this regard, Lucy’s concern for the former slaves grew as well. Within a month of their moving into their first home, she was appalled to find an abandoned black child on her doorstep. Lucy also remained in touch with the former slaves of her family, freed by her father’s desire, and often employed them, most famously Aunt Clara and her daughter, Winnie Monroe, who served Lucy in the White House. Lucy encouraged Winnie’s daughter Mary Monroe to attend Oberlin College. When Winnie died in Washington after the Hayeses had left the White House, it was Lucy who paid her funeral expenses.

Shortly after Webb’s birth in the summer of 1856, Rutherford suffered the loss of his beloved sister, Fanny, who died giving birth to twin daughters, who also died. Before Fanny’s death, she had suffered from a severe depression which led to a short stay in an asylum. She had recovered, only to die in childbirth. Her temporary bout of depression touched on a secret fear of both Rutherford and Lucy: insanity. Both had a deep horror and fear of it, for mental illness had been noted in both of their families. In the years to come, Lucy would take a deep interest not only in the treatment of the mentally ill but also in the creation of better hospitals for their care. This would be especially evident when Rutherford was governor of Ohio.

Fanny’s death had another effect on Lucy’s political development. Fanny had been an ardent supporter of women’s suffrage and Lucy, who was lukewarm on the subject, accompanied Fanny to several meetings. Though the meetings fired Lucy’s spirits, with Fanny gone and her own family continuing to grow, her interest in the women’s movement fell by the wayside.

In the summer of 1858, Lucy gave birth to her third son, Rutherford Platt Hayes, after she developed a severe case of rheumatism, accompanied by severe headaches which plagued her for the rest of her life. With the presence of her mother and her unmarried brother, Joe, Lucy often had help raising her children; so much so, that Birchie, Webb, and Ruddie pitied their Platt cousins because they did not have an Uncle Joe. With the addition of a new baby, the Hayeses enlarged their house, improving the kitchen and adding an extra bedroom for paid servants. One Christmas, Rutherford (Rud) and Lucy were surprised to find a Christmas tree put up for them by a German servant of theirs.

The Hayeses were fond, loving, and practical parents. They rarely had to discipline their sons, but the children’s high spirits sometimes led to a whipping—by Rud, not Lucy. Lucy’s tenderness extended especially to old people, as her mother-in-law, Sophia Hayes, often referred to herself. She who was not prone to high praise once complimented Lucy on her tender regard for the elderly, calling it “a rare and excellent trait of character.” Lucy would often take in motherless nieces and cousins and once, years later, when she heard of the illness of a young employee in Fremont, brought him home to Spiegel Grove to nurse back to health.

Rud’s uncle Sardis Birchard was an extremely successful businessman who had a huge influence on the lives of his nephew and his family. In the late 1850’s he had bought twenty-five wooded acres, which he called Spiegel Grove. The brick home he built there in time became home to Rud and Lucy and the site of the first presidential library. Often during the hot summers of the Civil War, Lucy would send her older boys to Uncle Sardis’s in upper Sandusky, which later became Fremont, Ohio.

The fall of 1860 saw the election of President Abraham Lincoln and the splitting of the Union. In February of 1861, Lucy accompanied her husband to Indianapolis to escort Lincoln, who had just been joined by his wife, Mary, and her two younger sons, to Cincinnati. Lincoln was on his way to Washington to be sworn in as president. When Lucy heard the news of Fort Sumter on April 12 through 14, 1861, she exclaimed that if she had been in a regiment of women, the fort would never have surrendered. She proudly—and fearfully—saw Rud off to war as commander of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in which her brothers also served as surgeons. Often when she visited Rud, they would walk from campfire to campfire, talking, joking, and sympathizing with the men under his command. It was not long before Lucy became known as the Mother of the Regiment, or Mother Lucy. Of concern to Lucy was the treatment of the former slaves. She wrote, “If a contraband [runaway slave] is in Camp, don’t let the 23rd Regiment be disgraced by returning [him or her] or anything of the kind.”

In December of 1861, her fourth son, Joseph, named for her brother, was born. In spite of her periodic fears of Confederate raids on Cincinnati and missing her husband, Lucy kept up her spirits, but even she had some dark moments. Confined with three active boys and a colicky baby, Lucy once commented to her husband that “drilling a regiment would be play.” She often wrote—overcoming a lifelong distaste for writing letters—to her brother Joe, as well as to Rud, and once said, “It is a hard thing to be a woman and witness so much and yet not do anything.” She told her brother to be ever kind to the wounded and sick and often went herself to the hospitals when visiting the regiment.

On September 14, 1862, the Union forces, including the Twenty-third Ohio, had pursued the Confederates to South Mountain, near Burkittsville, Maryland. Lucy was about to embark on one of her greatest trials. As the regiment engaged the enemy, Rud, not known for profanity, swore at his men to take the hill. As they advanced, he was hit in the left arm. His elbow was shattered, but he managed to stay on the field until ordered off. Lucy’s brother Joe treated Rutherford and managed to save his arm. The wounded man was then transferred to the home of strangers in Middletown, Maryland, where he had his orderly send off three telegrams to Lucy. Because the orderly did not have enough money, the first was not sent. When Lucy got the second message, “I am here, come to me. I shall not lose my arm,” it was mistakenly marked “Washington, D.C.”

Leaving her children to the care of Maria and Lucy’s oldest friend, Eliza Davis, Lucy took off for Washington with her brother-in-law, Mr. Platt, Fanny’s widowed husband. Arriving there, Lucy frantically searched the hospitals, which knew nothing. Figuring that Baltimore might be another possibility, she boarded another train and headed east. That, too, proved fruitless. Returning to Washington, Lucy traveled to the hospitals again and upon leaving the patent office, which was serving as a military hospital, she saw the number twenty-three on several uniforms and cried out, “Twenty-third Ohio!”

“It’s Mrs. Hayes,” someone called out. Upon learning her husband was in Middletown, Lucy and Mr. Platt took a train and arrived late at night to find Joe Webb waiting for them: He had come every night for a week in the hope that Lucy would arrive. One can only imagine her relief when she saw her husband’s face. He joked, “Here’s my wife who visits Washington and Baltimore before she visits her wounded husband!” Lucy did not find it funny, then or later when he repeated it in the White House. Rutherford’s relief in Lucy’s presence was evident in his letters home to Uncle Sardis, though he noted, “She visits the wounded and comes back in tears.” She often read to the men, laughed with them, soothed their fears, and closed their eyes.

While traveling, little Joe, who had always been sickly, caught a fever and died. As Lucy was sick herself, the little body was shipped home to Cincinnati for burial, which was taken care of by Lucy’s friend Eliza Davis. Lucy said later that this event had shown her what the meaning of friendship was all about. In September of 1864, Lucy gave birth to her fifth child, a boy whom Lucy hesitantly asked her husband if she could name for his commander, General George Crook. Rutherford agreed, and George Crook Hayes was christened.

Lucy, like all others, was overjoyed when peace came at long last in April, 1865, though she and Rud grieved for the loss of President Lincoln. When peace was announced, Rutherford, despite his abstemious modern-day image, told his daughter years later that “he went on a ‘toot.’” That he would do so showed how relieved he was at the war’s close. At the Grand Review on May 23, 1885, Lucy joined her husband on the reviewing stand. She later said that while she was pleased to know that slavery was forever dead, she grieved for all the boys, especially those of the Twenty-third Ohio, who would never come home.

Taking his seat in the House of Representatives (though elected, he had not left the Army until the fighting was done), Rutherford divided his time between Washington and Cincinnati. These few years gave Lucy a taste of what entertaining in Washington would be like. She was not entirely happy at the thought of living in the capital, though she loved attending the debates in Congress and would always wear a large, checkered shawl so Rud could see her. This fascination with politics would stand her in good stead in Columbus as a governor’s lady.

Back in Cincinnati in April, 1866, Lucy was horrified to discover Birch had come down with scarlet fever, which then afflicted all of her children, killing little George in late May. The loss of her favorite grandchild took a heavy toll on Maria Webb, and on September 14, 1866, Lucy, who had a beautiful voice, sang “Nearer My God to Thee” as she closed her mother’s eyes. Sophia Hayes, her mother-in-law, died the following month. Lucy later referred to 1866 as her worst year.

It was the era of Reconstruction, and in 1867, after the terrible race riots in the South, Lucy accompanied her husband to Memphis and New Orleans to see the devastation for herself. That same year Rud was elected governor of Ohio, and Lucy became the proud mother of a daughter, who was quickly named for the much lamented Fanny. Little Fanny became a special favorite of her father, who when he left for the office would hear her call out, “Bye-bye.” Fanny’s birth was followed in 1871 by the arrival of the eleven-pound Scott Russell, whose birth took a heavy toll on his mother’s strength. Fanny and Scott were to be Lucy’s younger family, while the three older boys were already almost in college. Webb had absolutely no idea his mother was expecting, and the last baby’s birth was a total surprise to him. Two years after Scott came Lucy’s last child, born in August of 1873. At first named Nibs, his name became Manning Force. Manning never thrived, and his death, on Lucy’s birthday in 1874, was grievous but not unexpected. Despite the loss of three children, Lucy could look back and write to Webb, “With all our changes and sorrows, a happy and blessed family we have been and are.”

Presidency and First Ladyship

When Rutherford Hayes was sworn in as governor of Ohio, Lucy made it her business to find a home in Columbus, to entertain and raise a family. These were normal duties of a Civil War-era matron, but she did more. She visited insane asylums, schools, reformatories, and orphanages, both for her own concerns and as the wife of the governor. Remembering the dead and wounded from her ghastly visits to wartime hospitals, Lucy had a special concern for the orphans left by the war. She was able to get state funding for an orphanage after lobbying for its passage in the eleventh hour. She shared Rutherford’s concern for education; it was he who signed the charter for Ohio State University. Lucy often attended the debates at the state capitol, even joking to Webb that she was becoming “quite the politician.”

Concern about their growing family, lack of a real home, and a need for rest made a third term as governor less than desirable for both husband and wife. The Hayeses held their last reception in Columbus in January, 1872. The arrivals of Fanny and Scott had necessitated a larger home, and Uncle Sardis’s offer of Spiegel Grove met their needs most handsomely. Though saddened by Sardis’s sudden death in 1874, Rutherford, looking back on his years as governor, wrote his beloved Lucy, “My life with you has been so happy, so successful, so beyond anticipation that I think of you with a loving gratitude that I do not know how to express.”

He contemplated his retirement only until necessity and politics brought him back again for a third term as governor. Upon his election, the Ohio State Journal wrote, “Mrs. Hayes is a perfect queen of a woman, and demonstrated as of old that she is equal to any emergency.”

However, the Hayeses would not long enjoy Columbus. At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia the name of Rutherford B. Hayes was brought forth, and on the seventy-seventh ballot he was nominated for the presidency. Afterward, Lucy found herself the center of press coverage: They commented on her bearing, her “Madonna-like” hairstyle, and her educational background. Lucy handled it all like a professional. The appearance of the Hayeses at the Ohio Day celebrations at the Centennial Exposition sparked the reaction of an appreciative crowd, to which Lucy, writing to Ruddie, then eighteen, said, “It was one of the happiest days in your mother’s life. The expressions of pleasure and joy at your father’s appearance touched the old wife who had known his merits for many years.”

The presidential contest of 1876 between Rutherford and Samuel J. Tilden was one of the most intensely partisan in U.S. history. In that time, campaigning was done through the newspapers, and the candidates stayed home to greet well-wishers. Lucy enjoyed it all, and though shots fired through her window dampened her usual good spirits, her enthusiasm remained. On the evening of November 7, 1876, the Hayeses went to bed uncertain of the election’s outcome. Fearing Rutherford had lost, their only regret was their fear that the South might force the nullification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which granted civil and voting rights to African Americans. However, nothing had been decided. Though Tilden had won the popular vote, electoral returns from South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and one vote from Oregon were in dispute. Hayes needed all to win, and Tilden needed only one. Congress appointed an electoral commission to decide the election. That decision would not come about until March, 1877, because of delaying tactics by both parties, so when the Hayeses boarded the train for Washington, they thought they might be returning by the same train. During a stop, Lucy was deluged with little white cards and demands for her autograph. In spite of her dislike of writing, she obliged, only to discover that it had been a prank by Webb.

On March 2, 1877, several hours after the commissioner awarded the election to Hayes, the family was roundly cheered as they entered Washington. Because the election had been contentious, President Ulysses S. Grant insisted on a private swearing-in ceremony for Hayes in the Red Room of the White House on March 3. On the following day, Inauguration Day, the newspaper noted Lucy’s striking looks, her confidence, her handsome family, and her college degree. After the luncheon given for them by Julia Grant, who was extremely unhappy to be leaving, the Hayeses took possession of their new home.

In reports of the women’s movement and all the changes it brought about, Lucy Hayes is often overlooked, if not actively criticized for not supporting the suffrage movement. Lucy, the first college graduate among U.S. First Ladies, was a firm believer in higher education, often visiting schools and colleges but never making speeches. She followed Julia Grant’s policy in allowing African American servants to take time off work to pursue an education. She did not support the cause of universal suffrage, though, and gave two reasons: first, because her husband did not, and second, because illiteracy among women was still high. What good would voting be, she reasoned, if a woman was denied a chance at an education and was even viewed as being incapable of reasoning? The more the suffrage activists pushed Lucy for a statement of support, the more she resisted; neither she nor her husband ever supported women’s suffrage.

However, according to accounts written at the time, Lucy was loved and admired. She had the ability to make others feel cared for and valued. As she grew older, Lucy became more thoughtful, kinder, and more loving of those who needed her help, but by the same token, she grew less confrontational and more fearful of fights or arguments. The deaths of three children, the loss of her mother, and the election and its attacks on her husband had drained her of some of her earlier zest. With that went her championing of causes.

There is one exception, however. Her name is forever linked to the banning of alcohol from the White House, for which she earned the nickname of Lemonade Lucy, though she was never publicly referred to by that name in her lifetime. It must also be noted that Lucy herself did not ban alcoholic beverages—her husband did. He had made it a part of the Republican campaign platform. Rutherford B. Hayes had a broad reformer’s streak in his nature, which led him not only to ban liquor from the White House but also to try to reform the hiring of federal employees. He wanted to eliminate a system of granting jobs in return for favors, believing that hires should instead be based on merit, no matter what party one voted. As far as liquor was concerned, Lucy agreed wholeheartedly, for she had taken the temperance oath from her own grandfather when she was a girl. Lucy’s temperance stance, however, was balanced by her own good sense and humanity. She felt that what people did in their own homes was their business. If the White House was to be her home, she was happy that no liquor would be served there.

As soon as the Hayeses announced their policy of banning alcohol, the State Department protested. The Grand Dukes Alexis and Constantine, sons of Czar Alexander II of Russia, one of the Union’s allies in the Civil War, were expected at a White House reception in mid-April, 1877. Because the Grand Dukes and their staff would expect to be served wine, the president and his wife yielded. This was the only occasion upon which wine was served at the White House during the Hayes years.

Lucy’s stand on liquor won her the support of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which later donated a portrait of Mrs. Hayes in a red velvet dress to the White House. Others, however, were very unhappy with the ban. One of those who made a practice of secretly bringing flasks of whiskey in their coats was heard to say, “Water like wine flowed at the president’s house.” Cartoons were even drawn of Lucy, ridiculing her; yet she abided by her husband’s wishes, which were in accordance with her own principles.

During Lucy’s four years in the White House, there was an ever-increasing use of the title First Lady. While in earlier times it had been used to refer to her predecessors, including Mary Lincoln, its first consistent usage was in Lucy’s time. Her charm, her expressive face, and even her childlike joy, which found expression in her jumping up and down, won even her husband’s enemies to her. When a comment was made to the president about her influence, Hayes remarked, “Mrs. Hayes may not have much sway with Congress, but she has a lot with me.” Once when she went home to Fremont, a newspaper said, “In the absence of Mrs. Hayes, the president will run the country.”

Loving history as she did, Lucy was appalled at the gaps in the presidential portrait gallery in the White House. She corrected it by hiring an Ohio artist to paint portraits of the missing presidents, such as William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor. Perhaps one of her most lasting gifts to the White House was the full-length portrait of Lady (Martha) Washington to accompany the full-length portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Both paintings hang today in the East Room.

During her tenure in the White House, Lucy saw the installation of the telephone, an appliance which was demonstrated to her by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. Late one night, she was awakened by her husband to dress and come downstairs to meet an inventor and see his invention. She obliged and an hour later shook hands with Thomas Alva Edison, who introduced her to the phonograph.

Lucy Hayes’s White House glowed with good spirits, which were evident at Eastertime because it was she who returned the Easter Egg Roll to the White House from the Capitol Building. Lucy’s china was another contribution to the White House. Loving the flowers, animals, and scenery of the United States, she hired artist Theodore R. Davis to design a set of uniquely American china that would reflect this beauty. The results were certainly striking, to say the least, and drew some fire for their realistic depiction of animals and birds. One senator told Lucy that he did not want to see at the bottom of his dish what he had had for dinner. Some of the dishes are truly works of art, and others are almost distasteful. To this day, anyone who has seen the Presidential China Collection will remember the Hayes china.

Lucy invited a crowd to her first Thanksgiving dinner in Washington, including all the White House secretaries and their families as well as the telegraph operator. It took three turkeys and a roast pig to feed all the guests. After dinner, ten-year-old Fanny and six-year-old Scott played blindman’s buff. Christmas was similarly festive, with Lucy giving gifts to all the staff members.

On December 30, 1877, Rud and Lucy celebrated twenty-five years of marriage, with their original minister presiding and Lucy wearing her original wedding dress, let out a good bit, as her weight had increased to 160 pounds. The celebration would become one of Lucy’s happiest memories.

While visiting the South with her husband as part of an attempt to heal the wounds caused by the 1876 election, Lucy made it a point to call on former First Lady Sarah Polk in Nashville, Tennessee. Julia Tyler, another former First Lady, would be invited back to the White House to stand in a reception line with Lucy. Lucy was also friendly with Julia Grant, Lucretia Garfield, and Caroline Harrison, who had entertained them in Indianapolis, as well as Ida McKinley, who had entertained them in Canton. When family friends the Herrons were invited to the White House to christen their baby daughter, seventeen-year-old Helen Herron was so impressed that she determined to return as First Lady. She did so, as Mrs. William H. Taft.

In 1880 President and Mrs. Hayes spent seventy-two days traveling from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. For the first time in history, a presidential couple traveled the width of the continent, which inspired the press to use the title First Lady of the Land. They rode on train, wagon, and stagecoach. At one point Lucy donned her husband’s pants, hat, and shoes to go down in a mine. They stopped to see Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute Indian who had been vaccinated against smallpox at the White House along with Lucy and other guests. Winnemucca made a plea to President Hayes to gather all people together to one place where they could all live in peace. Lucy was so moved, tears could be seen on her cheeks.

Having seen California, including Los Angeles, the Hayeses headed back to Washington for the 1880 election. Rutherford had stuck to his resolution to run for only one term and was pleased when the Republican candidate, James A. Garfield, won handily. Lucy’s last White House reception, on February 24, 1881, saw the house lit beautifully, with every room open to provide room for the two thousand guests.

“Out of a scrape, out of a scrape,” Rutherford chuckled to himself as he watched Garfield take the oath of office. Wearing a large, white bonnet, her face beaming, Lucy made her last appearance as First Lady. Her last act was to slip away from the luncheon she had provided for James and Lucretia Garfield to look over the rooms to make sure everything was in its place. It was time to say good-bye. The doorman, Tom Pendel, said later that never before or since did a First Lady’s departure cause so many tears to flow.

Legacy

Lucy’s last years were spent happily among her children and animals. Aside from her work for the Women’s Home Missionary Society of her Methodist Church, Lucy made almost no public speeches or visits except accompanying her husband to New York as the guests of President and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison on the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s swearing in as president. Aside from her usual aches and pains, Lucy suffered from high blood pressure, probably not helped by her increasing weight, and shortness of breath. Otherwise, she was generally cheerful and happy, often whistling or singing to herself.

On June 22, 1889, after she and her niece had spent the day ordering roses (her niece laughingly said maybe they should just notify the company which ones they did not want) Lucy told her to go out and watch the others play tennis. Shortly afterward, Lucy’s maid found her paralyzed, a needle and thread in hand. She had suffered a massive stroke. Three days later, on Tuesday, June 25, 1889, she died, with her husband holding her.

Rutherford got up and, even while his beloved wife was being readied for her coffin, wrote in his diary about her. He closed his entry with two statements: “I consider the single most interesting fact of my life is my marriage to Lucy Ware Webb,” and “She was the Golden Rule Incarnate.”

Bibliography

Geer, Emily Apt. First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1984. Well-researched, balanced portrait of Lucy Hayes.

Gould, Lewis L., ed. American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy. New York: Garland, 1996. An enjoyable, informative, and objective combination of biographical sketches and histories of the First Ladies.

Holloway, Laura Carter. The Ladies of the White House: Or, In the Home of the Presidents. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1976. Further subtitled Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time, 1789-1882, this book includes twenty-five leaves of plates.

Hoogenboom, Ari Arthur. Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Author of the first new biography in fifty years makes the case of appreciating Hayes’s limited options and the choices he made.

Klapthor, Margaret Brown. The First Ladies. 9th ed. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association with the cooperation of the National Geographic Society, 1999.

Mayo, Edith P., ed. The Smithsonian Book of the First Ladies: Their Lives, Times, and Issues. New York: H. Holt, 1996. This book’s brief chapters include a biography of Lucy Hayes.