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Secretaries of the Interior

of

The Department of the Interior was created by Act of Congress March 3, 1849, and Its secretars made a member of the Cabinet. It is charged with the supervision of public business relating to the General Land Office, Bureau of Reclamation. Geological Survey, Office of Indian Affairs, Bureau Resi- Ap Pensions, Bureau of Education, National Park Service, and certain hospitals and eleemosynary Institutions in the Dist. of Columbia. Cabinet Officers dences pointed

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Henry M. Teller..
Lucius Q. C. Lamar Miss..

1885

F. D. Roosevelt. Harold L. Ickes..III.

Vice-Presidents of the

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In place of "protect," W. H. Taft, when he took the oath, used the word "maintain."

Oath of U. S. Supreme Court Justice I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully discharge all the duties incumbent on me as Judge, according to the best of my abilities and underof the United States. standing, agreeably to the Constitution and laws

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the first person in the history of the United States to win or accept more than two terms of the Presidency. He was inaugurated (Jan. 20, 1941) for his third term.

Cleveland's baptismal name was Stephen Grover; Wilson's was Thomas Woodrow; that of Coolidge was John Calvin.

Andrew Johnson was a pro-Union Dem., who was nominated with Lincoln on a National-Union ticket. RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS Friends (Quakers)-Hoover. Episcopalians-Washington,

Madison, Monroe, Gen. W. H. Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Pierce, Arthur, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Presbyterians-Jackson, Buchanan, Cleveland, Benj. Harrison, Wilson. Methodists-Polk, Johnson, Grant, McKinley. Unitarian-John Adams, J. Q. Adams, Fillmore, Reformed Dutch-Van Buren, T. Roosevelt.

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Congregationalist-Coolidge.
Disciples-Garfield.

Jefferson and Lincoln did not claim membership any denomination. Hayes attended the Methodist Church, but never joined. Freemasons Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKinley, both Roosevelts, Taft, Harding.

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Although born in London, her father was an American, and his family were Marylanders.

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Biographies of the Presidents and Their Wives

Source: Government and family records.
WHO WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT?

On Sept. 5, 1774, delegates from twelve states (Georgia was not then represented) met at Philadelphia and organized what has since been commonly called the Continental Congress. The members were Delegates, and the voting on all questions was by States (Colonies), each State having one vote. The Delegate in charge was styled President of the Congress.

The Continental Congress was in session, at various times and places, until Mar. 2, 1789. One of its important acts was the drawing up, and adoption on July 4, 1776, of the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by "the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled."

Between Nov. 15, 1777, and July 9, 1778. the Continental Congress adopted "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States." These Articles gave to the Thirteen Colonies the name "The United States of America." and the Articles, generally known as the First Constitution,

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George Washington. Federalist, born on Friday, Feb. 22 (Feb. 11, O.S.), 1732, died on Dec. 14, 1799, was the great grandson of Col. John Washington (1634-1677), who came from Yorkshire, England, and settled in 1657, or 1658, on a tract in Westmoreland County, Virginia, bordering the west shore of the Potomac River near its mouth. He bought, in 1665, a plantation on the Potomac River, between Bridges Creek and Pope's Creek, the latter named after Nathaniel Pope, whose daughter, Ann, was Col. John Washington's second wife.

The Washingtons had been aristocrats in England, adherents of the Stuarts, and when Charles I was beheaded, the Washingtons emigrated to America.

Col. John Washington had a son, Lawrence Washington, whose second son was Augustine Washington, born in 1694. Lawrence Washington's wife, Mildred Warner, was the daughter of Augustine Warner, Jr., and Mildred Reade, daughter of Col. George Reade and Elizabeth Martiau, who, in her turn, was the daughter of Nicholas Martiau, a French Huguenot, the first American ancestor of George Washington, born in France in 1591. came to Virginia in July, 1620, and died at Yorktown in 1657, of which place he was the original patentee. Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain is second cousin, six times removed, of George Washington, through descent from the Warners.

Augustine Washington by his first wife, Jane Butler, who died Nov. 24, 1729, had four children. His second wife, Mary Ball, whom he married March 6, 1731, bore, as her first child, George Washington, born, as was his father, at Wakefield, on Pope's Creek, fifty miles below Mount Vernon. That mansion burned down on Christmas Eve, 1780. Its location later was marked by a granite shaft, erected by Congress. A new brick house, modeled after the old one, was built on the site, and dedicated on Feb. 22, 1932. The reservation, by Act of Congress, has become the George Washington Birthplace National Monument, and is administered by the National Parks Service.

George's parents moved about 1735 to Mount Vernon. That mansion burned in 1739, and the present one was erected on the site. Augustine died April 12, 1743. There George Washington studied mathematics and became a surveyor in the employ of William Fairfax, father of Lawrence's wife and manager of the Virginia estate of his cousin, Lord Fairfax. George accompanied Lawrence to Barbados, West Indies, and got smallpox. After his return, he entered the military service of Virginia. He later served under Gen. Braddock in the war between the English and the French.

Washington took command of the Continental Army, at Cambridge, Mass., July 3, 1775; after winning the Revolutionary War, he took leave of the officers of his force, Dec. 4. 1783, at Fraunces Tavern, New York City, and formally resigned to Congress, Dec. 20, that year at Annapolis, Md., his commission as General and Commander-inChief. He had served without pay, and would accept only his actual expenses; from the date of his commission, June 20, 1775, to Dec. 13, 1783, his expenses totaled £14,500. Congress, on July 3, 1798, when war with France was imminent, again commissioned Washington as Lieutenant General and Commander-in-Chief, but hostilities were averted. In May, 1782, when Washington was at his headquarters at Newburgh, N. Y., dissatisfaction in the army, especially among the officers, found expression in a letter to him from Brig. Gen.

remained in force until Mar. 4, 1789, when the Constitution of the United States was proclaimed in effect.

The Articles of Confederation, though adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778, were not ratified by all of the States, Maryland being the last to assent, until Mar. 1, 1781. The Articles designated Congress as "the United States in Congress Assembled." The Presidents of the Sessions of the Continental Congress after the Articles went into effect usually signed themselves "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." These were: Thomas McKean, Del.; John Hansom, Md.; Elias Boudinot, N. J.; Thomas Mifflin. Pa.; Richard Henry Lee, Va.; Nathaniel Gorham, Mass.; Arthur St. Clair, Pa.; and Cyrus Griffin, Va. John Hancock was elected but did not serve. George Washington was the first President under the Constitution. He was, the Department of State says, the "first president of the United States of America."

Lewis Nicola, indicating a disposition to change the form of government and make him King. He refused to countenance the movement, so it went no further. He established a Spy Service.

He was President of the Convention that drafted the Constitution in 1787.

The estate at Mt. Vernon, which George Washington inherited from his half-brother Lawrence, had been named by Lawrence in honor of the British Admiral, Lord Vernon, under whom Lawrence had served at the siege of Cartagena.

Washington's death was due to exposure on Dec. 12. 1799, in a storm while riding over his estate with his managers. He went to bed with a sore throat, followed by ague. He had signed his will Saturday, Dec. 14, 1799. A vault was made for on July 9, 1799. The end came about 10:20 P.M.. Washington's body under the dome of the Capitol at Washington, but the remains were interred at Mt. Vernon.

He was one of the wealthiest men in the country, owning 70,000 acres of land in Virginia and 40.000 acres in the near-west, which latter Congress gave at what would now exceed $5,000,000. him for his military service. His estate was valued

slaves, some of whom belonged to his wife. He was Washington owned, soon after his marriage, 317 a distiller (at his Dogue Run place), as well as a farmer. He was a man of powerful physique, 6 feet, 2 inches, in height, with sandy hair, blue eyes, and big hands and feet. He weighed 210 pounds when 40 years of age. He was not a prohibitionist, and attended horse shows and races, took part in card was a horseback rider, hunter and fisherman. games, fox hunting, cock fighting. and was a regular theatre goer. After his inaugural in New York he was a first-nighter at the John St. playhouse. He was a book collector.

He

The Washington 1amily in America were Episcopalians, and George Washington attended these services, at Alexandria, Va., at Philadelphia (where most of his official civil career was spent), and at New York City, where he had a family pew in St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey St.

Washington's first inauguration was in Federal Hall, Wall and Nassau Sts.. New York, April 30, 1789; his second, in Philadelphia.

Washington. with the unanimous approval of his Cabinet, in which sat Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, extended recognition to the improvised government of France-the Committee of Public Safety, with its Dantons and Robespierres.

On Sept. 17, 1796, Washington said in an address: "If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off** when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice, shall counsel.'

Woodrow Wilson, in The President of the United States, wrote: "General Washington set an example which few of his successors seem to have followed He made constant and intimate use of his colleagues in every matter that he handled, seeking their assistance and advice by letter when they were at a distance. It is well known that his greater state papers *** are full of the ideas and the very phrases of the men about him whom he most trusted. His rough drafts came back to him from Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison in great part rephrased and rewritten, in many passages reconceived and given a new color.

Parson Weems in his "I cannot tell a lie" anec

dote said the cherry tree was barked-not cut down, by young Washington.

Mrs. Washington, born in 1731, died in 1802, was a daughter of Col. John Dandridge, planter, of New Kent County, Va., and widow of Daniel Parke Custis, also a rich farmer of that county. Her marriage to Washington was on Jan. 6, 1759. General Washington had no children of his own His wife, who was small and plump, with dark hair and hazel eyes, had become, by her first union. the mother of four children, Martha Parke Custis. (Col.) John Parke Custis, and two who died in infancy.

Col. John Parke Custis (1753-1781) (grandson of the Governor of the Leeward Islands, who was assassinated), inherited from his father an estate of 1,000 acres at Arlington, Va., near Washington, where the National Cemetery is now located, and had four children-Eliza (1776-1832), who married Thomas Law; Martha, born in 1777, who became the wife of Thomas Peter; George Washington Parke Custis, who married Mary Lee Fitzhugh of Va., and whose daughter became the wife of Robert E. Lee. Confederate General; and Eleanor Parke Custis, who became the wife of Major Lawrence Lewis, son of Fielding Lewis, whose father, Fielding Lewis, 1725-1781, had married George Washington's sister, Elizabeth, and was a planter, owning half of the town of Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock River.

John Adams, Federalist, who was born in that part of the ancient town of Braintree that is now the City of Quincy, Mass., Oct. 30, 1735, and died there July 4, 1826, was a great-grandson of Henry Adams, who came with his eight sons from Barton St. David, Somersetshire, England, in 1636, and settled on a grant of 40 acres.

John was the eldest son of John Adams, farmer, and of Susanna Boylston, daughter of Peter Boylston, of Brookline, Mass. He graduated at Harvard in 1755; taught school at Worcester; practised law at Boston; served in the State Legislature, and in the Revolutionary Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, and in the Continental Congress; was a signer of the Declaration of Independence; Commissioner to France, 1778, with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee; Minister to Holland; helped to negotiate treaties in Europe; Minister to England 1785-1788; elected Vice-President in 1788, and again in 1792; chosen President in 1796. He was inaugurated at Philadelphia. Washington attended. The Federal party under Adams was opposed to the western expansion of the country, and the party began to lose grip in the succeeding administration of Jefferson when the latter acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from France. The opposition to expansion was strong in New England. Adams was the first President to live in the White House. He was a Unitarian and was a cousin of Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, who also was a signer of the Declaration. He was an orator and a pamphleteer; a man of medium height, active, florid, and corpulent. He died on the same day as Jefferson, and was buried in a crypt under the First Parish Church at Quincy. The Library of Congress has many letters of both the Adamses.

Mrs. Adams (Abigal Smith), born in 1744, died in 1818, was a daughter of the Rev. William Smith, a Congregational minister of Weymouth, Mass. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy, was a great-granddaughter of the Puritan divine, Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, Mass., and a great grand-niece of the Rev. John Norton, of Boston.

Thomas Jefferson, born April 13, 1743, died July 4, 1826, was of Welsh descent, according to an unsubstantiated tradition in his family (his grandfather dwelt at Uxbornés, in Chesterfield County, Va., southwest of Richmond), and is called the founder of what is now known as the Democratic Party. He was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Va.. the third of ten children, two of whom died in infancy. His mother was a daughter of Isham Randolph, a rich Virginian. His father, Peter Jefferson, with the aid of 130 slaves, tilled a 1,900-acre tobacco and wheat plantation.

The President died at Monticello, which he had built from his own design. It was saved to his family by friends who satisfied the claims of his creditors, and is now a national shrine. He wrote his own epitaph, now on his tomb. It runs thus: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia."

In the Continental Congress treaties were proposed by which all of the land west of the crest of the Alleghany Mountains was to be divided between France and Spain, the latter to receive all south of the Ohio River. The treaties were defeated by Jefferson, with the aid of Patrick Henry and their associates.

Jefferson was a lawyer. He was a writer, not an orator. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses with Washington and in the Continental Congress; succeeded Patrick Henry,, in 1779, as Governor of Virginia; negotiated, in Europe, treaties with various countries; Secretary of State under Washington; elected Vice-President under John Adams; elected President in 1800, with Aaron Burr, his rival for the Presidency, as Vice-President; re-elected in 1804, with George Clinton as Vice-President. When Burr, who had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, became involved in the Blennerhasset expedition and was put on trial at Richmond, Va., in 1807, on a federal charge of treason, Jefferson let it be known to Chief Justice John Marshall that Burr should be found guilty. But Burr was acquitted, because no evidence had shown that he actually had levied war. Jefferson was hostile to the Supreme Court also, for the reason that, to his mind, the court under Marshall was disposed to build up the Federal power at the expense of the States.

In 1810, upon the demise of Associate Justice William Cushing, Jefferson wrote to Albert Gallatin: "I observe old Cushing is dead. At length then we have a chance of getting a Republican majority in the Supreme Court."

Jefferson is credited with decisive influence in giving the United States a definite turn to popular rather than aristocratic democracy. In 1804, when Napoleon had made himself Emperor, Jefferson remarked of France to John Quincy Adams that "it was very much to be wished that they could now return to the Constitution of 1789 and call back the Old Family," Jefferson was responsible for the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts of 1807. Jefferson, sometimes called, in his campaigns, sandy, when, in 1760, he entered the College of "Long Tom," was tall, raw-boned, freckled and William and Mary. He played the violin. He did not claim membership in any religious denomination. Jefferson was the first of the Presidents inaugurated at Washington. His predecessor, John Adams, drove out of Washington while Jefferson was being inaugurated.

Mrs. Jefferson, born in 1748, died in 1782, tall, slim, vivacious, with brown eyes, was a daughter of John Wayles, a wealthy lawyer of Charles City County, Va. Her first husband was Bathurst Skelton, who died before she was twenty.

Of the six children of the Jeffersons only two, daughters, lived beyond infancy. Martha, 17721836, became the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., afterward governor of Virginia; Mary (Maria), 1778-1804, was married to her cousin, J. W. Eppes.

Mrs. Jefferson died 19 years before her husband became President, and Mrs. Madison for a time acted as mistress of the White House. Levees were abolished as soon as Jefferson became President. Jefferson inherited through his wife from her father 40,000 acres of land and 135 slaves.

James Madison, Republican, was born March 16, 1751, at Port Conway, King George County, Va., and died June 28, 1836, at Montpelier, Orange Co., Va. He was a son of James Madison, descendant of John Madison, of England, who in 1653 took out a patent for land on Chesapeake Bay between the York and North Rivers. James Madison's paternal grandmother, Frances Taylor, of Orange County, had four brothers, one of whom was grandfather of President Zachary Taylor. Madison's mother was Nellie Conway, and he was oldest of 12 children.

Madison graduated at Princeton in 1771; studied law at Princeton one year; returned to Virginia, continued the study of law; helped draft the Virginia State Constitution, and was a member of the first State Lefislature; a delegate to the Contirental Congress; again a member of the Virginia Legislature; once more a delegate to the Continental Congress; served in the Federal Convention, and helped draw up, and signed, the Federal Constitution; drew up the Virginia Resolution against the alien and sedition laws; Secretary of State under Jefferson; President for two terms.

Madison was small in stature, neat in attire. quiet, polite and scholarly. He spent the latter part of his life on his estate at Montpelier. There he was buried. He was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Madison, Dolly Payne, born in 1772, died in 1849, was raised as a Quaker, and was a daughter of John Payne of North Carolina. Her mother, Mary Coles, was a cousin of Patrick Henry. Her grandfather, Josias Payne, was a son of George Payne (or Paine) of Goochland County, Va. Her first husband, whom she married when nineteen, was John Todd, a Pennsylvania lawyer and Quaker, who died in 1793 at Philadelphia in a yellow fever epidemic. He left her one son, Payne Todd.

The first marriage in the White House was on March 11, 1811, and united Justice Thomas Todd,

328

U. S.-Presidents and Their Wives; Biographies of

of the U. S. Supreme Court, and Lucy Payne Washington, widow of Phillip Steptoe Washington (nephew of Dolly Payne.)

James Monroe, Republican, was born in Westmoreland County, Va., near the Potomac River, not far from Washington's birthplace, April 28, 1758, and died on July 4, 1831, at New York City. His ancestry was Scottish. The first Monroe in Virginia settled there in 1650. James was a son of Spence Monroe and Elizabeth Jones, sister of Judge Joseph Jones, a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress.

He attended William and Mary College, but soon, with teachers and students, among the latter being John Marshall, left and joined the Revolutionary Army under George Washington, was wounded in action at Trenton, N. J., and fought at Harlem Heights, (N. Y. City) at White Plains, N. Y., and at Monmouth, N. J.

He served in the Virginia Legislature and in the Continental Congress; helped to draw up the Fedal Constitution; served as United States Senator: Envoy to France, 1794 (recalled by President Washington); Governor of Virginia (1799-1802); Plenipotentiary to France (Jan.-July, 1803), and took part in the Louisiana Purchase; Minister to England (1803) and to Spain (1804); Secretary of State under Madison, and in 1814-15 also Secretary of War: President for two terms.

As President in 1823 he formulated the Monroe Doctrine, which declares against European aggrandizement in the three Americas.

His body was buried in the Marble Cemetery, Second Street, N. Y. City, but in 1858, the centenary of his birth, was interred in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. Monroe lived on his estate, Ash Lawn, in Albemarle County, Virginia, 5 miles from Charlottesville, 1799 to 1825, when he left the White House. While president, about 1823. he moved into a country home at Oak Hill, Loudon County, Va., (designed for him by Thomas Jefferson, and built by James Hoban, designer of the White House) and maintained it as his residence from 1825 to 1830, removing on his wife's death to New York City, to be near his two daughters, who were married and lived there. He had inherited the 1,800-acre Oak Hill estate from his uncle, Judge Joseph Jones. It was in the Autumn of 1823 that Monroe, during a vacation at Oak Hill, drew up his Monroe Doctrine message to Congress.

He had studied law, as well as politics, under the guidance of Thomas Jefferson, and in his earlier years practiced at Fredericksburg, Va. His office there has been restored and preserved. He was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Monroe, Eliza or Elizabeth, born at N. Y. City in 1768, and died in 1830, was a daughter of former Capt. Lawrence Kortright of the British Army. While in France with Monroe, who was the American Minister, she secured the release from the prison, La Force, of Mme. de Lafayette, who hourly expected to be executed. One of Mrs. Monroe's sisters was the wife of M. Heyliger, Grand Chamberlain to the King of Denmark; another sister married Nicholas Gouverneur of N. Y. City. John Quincy Adams, a son of President John Adams, and likewise a Unitarian, was born in that part of the ancient town of Braintree that is now the City of Quincy, Mass., July 11, 1767, and died following a stroke of paralysis while in Congress at Washington, Feb. 23, 1848. His mother's grandfather was John Quincy. J. Q. Adams was educated in Europe, graduated at Harvard, and practiced law; was Minister to Holland, and to Portugal, under Washington; in his father's administration was Minister to Prussia; served in the Massachusetts Senate: in 1803 entered the United States Senate as a Federalist, then became a Republican and later a Whig.

Resigning from the Senate, he taught rhetoric
at Harvard; Minister to Russia under Madison;
took part in the peace treaty at Ghent; Minister to
England; Secretary of State under Monroe, nego-
tiated the Florida Purchase and took part in for-
mulating the Monroe Doctrine; chosen President
by the House of Representatives, though Gen.
Jackson had got the highest number of electoral
votes at the election-Jackson, 99; Adams, 84;
Crawford. 41; Clay, 37. Soon after his Presidential
term ended he was elected to the House of Repre-
sentatives from Massachusetts as an Independent,
and fought the slave power. He was buried at
Quincy, Mass., in a crypt under the First Parish
Church.

Mrs. John Quincy Adams (Louisa Catherine
Johnson) born in London, Feb. 12, 1775, died in
1852, was a niece of Thomas Johnson of Maryland.
Her father had lived abroad for years and by direc-
tion of Congress acted as American fiscal agent in
Miss Johnson be-
France and later in England.
came the wife of Adams at London and was his

companion during his long diplomatic career
Europe.

in

Their children were: George Washington Adams, born at Berlin in 1801; John Q. Adams jr., born at Boston July 4, 1803; Charles Francis Adams, born at Boston in 1807; and Louisa Catherine Adams. born at St. Petersburg in 1811, and died there in 1812. Their son, C. F. Adams, lawyer, served in the Vice-President in 1848; served in Congress; MinisMassachusetts Legislature; Free Soil candidate for ter to England during the Civil War; President of the Geneva Board of Arbitration.

Andrew Jackson, Democrat, was born in the Lancaster district of the Waxhaw (New Lancaster County, S. C.), a pioneer settlement on the North Carolina-South Carolina line. Marquis James in his blography, "Andrew Jackson: The Border Capstudy of the documents extant and declares the tain." Indianapolis, 1933, makes an exhaustive 15, 1767, in the Crawford house then and now on weight of evidence is that Jackson was born March the South Carolina side of the boundary which was then in dispute and was not determined until 1813. He died at his home, The Hermitage, near Nashville, Tenn., June 8, 1845.

He was a posthumous son of Andrew Jackson. who came over from North Ireland in 1765, and his mother was Elizabeth Hutchinson, also from Ireland. He studied law at Salisbury, N. C., practiced at Nashville, helped draw, in 1796, the Constitution of Tennessee; served in Congress, and in the U. S. Senate; resigned in 1798 to become a Tennessee Supreme Court Judge; fought several duels, in one of which he killed Charles Dickinson and was himself severely wounded. Dickinson, it was said, had insulted Mrs. Jackson.

In 1812 Jackson, "Old Hickory," headed 2,000 troops against the British; in 1813 he defeated the Creek Indians on the Tallapoosa River; in 1814 he became a Major-General in the army; defeated the British at Mobile, at Pensacola, and at New Orleans: seized Florida temporarily from the Spanish, In 1821, after the purchase of Florida, he was and quelled Negro and Indian disorders there. Senate. In 1824 he got more electoral votes for appointed Governor; in 1823 entered the U. S. President than J. Q. Adams, but the election was Adams was chosen President by 13 States, with 7 thrown into the House of Representatives, where States for Jackson, and 4 for Crawford. In 1828 Jackson was elected President, and re-elected in 1832.

He was shot at, in the Capitol at Washington, Jan. 29, 1835, by Richard Lawrence, a house painter. The weapon missed fire. Jackson was a Presbyterian, tall and thin. He was an enemy of the Bank of the United States, and finally, Čonof existence. He sent federal troops to Charleston gress to the contrary notwithstanding, drove it out to scare South Carolina from its plan to nullify the national tariff laws.

Mrs. Jackson, born in Halifax County, Virginia, in 1767, was the daughter of Col. John Donelson, a vania County, Va., and settled in Kentucky, later surveyor who, in 1779, sold his ironworks in Pittsylremoving to Tennessee. Her first husband, Capt. son, who married her, first, at Natchez in 1791. Lewis Robards, divorced her, after accusing Jackbefore the divorce was granted, and again in 1794, after the decree.

Mrs. Jackson died in 1828, before her husband went into the White House. She had no children. but Gen. Jackson adopted one of her sister's children, a boy, who was named Andrew Jackson jr. and who inherited the General's estate.

The mistresses of the White House in the Jackson Administration were his wife's niece, Emily, a slender brunette, who had married her cousin, Major A. J. Donelson, and Sarah York Jackson, a Philadelphia Quakeress, married to the President's adopted son.

was born at Martin Van Buren, Democrat, Kinderhook, N. Y., Dec. 5, 1782, and died there of asthma July 24, 1862. He was the first president born as an American citizen after the Declaration of Independence, all his predecessors having been born as British subjects. He was a son of Abraham Van Buren and Mary Hoes (originally spelled Goes), widow of a man named Van Alen. The late James J. Van Alen was his half-brother. The whole family was of Dutch origin.

Van Buren practiced law; was Surrogate of Columbia County, N. Y.; a State Senator, AttorneyGeneral of the State; re-entered the State Senate, became U. S. Senator in 1821, and resigned to become Governor of New York; Secretary of State under President Jackson: resigned in 1831 to be Minister to England but was not confirmed; elected Vice-President in 1832; in 1836, elected President; Free Soil candidate for President in 1848, but was defeated. He was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Mrs. Van Buren, like her husband, was of Dutch

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