Please enable JavaScript in your browser's settings to use this part of Geni. One public gesture which Eliza Johnson purposefully made as First Lady that perpetuated an important degree of political symbolism about the Johnson Administration’s Reconstruction policy has been largely ignored by historians. Through his grandchildren, Andrew Johnson drew comfort and anticipated the distraction from his contentious work as President.    MSS. Publicly, Martha Patterson maintained the impression that as a Senate wife she played no political role as a Presidential daughter. Senator. Geni requires JavaScript! However unpredictable, Eliza Johnson’s consumption waxed and waned during her tenure as First Lady but as it gradually worsened, she became sedentary and lived a more confined life towards the Administration’s end. Martha Patterson managed to calmly integrate the reality that the family might potentially be forced to return home to Tennessee if her father’s impeachment resulted in his removal from office. Senator from Tennessee. According to local folklore, when she first saw Andrew (as he was driving a blind pony), she remarked, “There goes my beau!” The young couple—she was 17 and he was 18—started a tailor shop and worked together while she encouraged him to continue his education and perfect his oratorical skills. That faith began to develop many years before in East Tennessee when Andrew Johnson first came to Greeneville and established a tailor shop. This prompted deeper resentment of him and increased threats against his life. The official hosts were listed as “The children of the President's family,” and the event was a dinner and dance for three hundred other young children, not only the offspring of political officials and prominent Washingtonians, but those of the white working class. Tradition holds that prior to departing for Kentucky they lived briefly as common-law spouses in a stone cabin there. Holding a quiet ceremony at home with no wedding festivities after, the couple did take a honeymoon tour of several southern cities, including Nashville and New Orleans. Here is her remarkable story. Closer examination of the nature of her condition and activities during the Johnson Administration, however, refute the miscast perception of her life as being one curtailed to knitting while seated in her rocking chair, in her White House room. During vacations and weekends, Miss Johnson frequently accepted the invitations of First Lady Sarah Polk to participate in White House social events. She married David T. Patterson, who after the Civil War served as U.S. Held just weeks before the Johnson family left Washington to return home, it was ostensibly to honor the President on his birthday of 29 December 1868. Eliza Johnson had apparently considered such a possibility, for she had brought candles from home and kept sandwich remnants from the previous day, which she gave her grandchildren to eat. To what extent her tuberculosis became serious enough to limit Eliza Johnson’s life is speculative, but small clues might provide some indication. To all such callers, Martha Patterson stonewalled; despite being the president’s daughter, her opinion had no more power to influence him, she claimed, than that of any other person and that was the legally correct attitude to hold. She married him within a year, on May 17, 1827. As First Lady, she used considerable skill in assuming the personal management of an April 1866 $30,000 congressional redecorating appropriation. Lastly, the claim that “Her very existence is a myth toalmost every one,” is contradicted by the public mail addressed to her, the solicitation of her support for a charitable cause, and the spectrum of influential figures in politics and business whom she befriended or hosted as dinner guests. The Chicago Reporter article further makes two glaring errors, the first claiming that Eliza Johnson was older than her husband and the second being that she “taught the President to read.” Further, it was written in the Administration’s last days at which point characterizing her as an “invalid” was valid, but hardly reflected the sum of her time as First Lady. Andrew Johnson "We are plain people from Tennessee, called here for a little time by a nation’s calamity, and I hope too much will not be expected of us." A month before the Johnson Administration ended, Mary Stover preceded her parents to Tennessee in order to ensure that new wallpapering and carpeting had been placed in their home, which had been ransacked and damaged during the Civil War. Poor health—she suffered from tuberculosis—and concern for her two surviving sons, who suffered from alcoholism, increased her predilection to remain in the background. As the Tennessee Military Governor’s wife, Eliza Johnson had lived from the spring of 1863 to the spring of 1865 with her family in a large and beautiful Nashville mansion on Charlotte Avenue. This page was last changed on 8 April 2020, at 02:16. The nature of what was called “consumption” in relation to the First Lady but was becoming more widely known by its name today of tuberculosis. On the second night, Eliza Johnson and her family were able to find shelter only in an abandoned restaurant, with no place to sleep, no food for sustenance, and no light. Mrs. Tyler personally presented her own portrait for the fledgling collection. Ewall’s daughter, however, later revealed that “subsequent events” (for which she provided no details) proved that “Mrs. Although she encouraged his political ambitions, she did not enjoy the limelight that his success focused on her, preferring instead to concentrate her energies on raising their five children (four of whom were born within the first seven years of their marriage) and maintaining the house. To what degree President Johnson shared with her the details of his conflicts on Reconstruction policy with the Republican leaders in Congress and the subsequent 1868 trial for his impeachment and removal from office is unclear.