*Date is that of marriage to man who became President. In some cases an earlier (or later) marriage also occurred.
**Terms of First Ladies coincide with the presidential term and run from one inauguration to another except as noted. Until 1937, Presidents assumed the office March 4.
1. Actual birthdate is disputed.
2. William Henry Harrison died one month after taking office, before Anna had arrived in Washington.
3. Letitia Tyler died September 10, 1842.
4. Julia Gardiner married President John Tyler on June 26, 1844, only a few months before his presidential term ended.
5. Zachary Taylor died in office on July 9, 1850.
6. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865.
7. James Garfield died September 19, 1881 after having been shot on July 2.
8. Frances Folsom married President Grover Gleveland on June 2, 1886, after he had taken office in March, 1885. He was defeated for a second consecutive term but was reelected in 1892 and served from 1893 to 1897.
9. Caroline Harrison died in the Executive Mansion, October 25, 1892.
10. William McKinley was assassinated on September 14, 1901, just months after beginning his second term.
11. Ellen Wilson died in the White House on August 6, 1914.
12. Edith Galt married President Woodrow Wilson on December 18, 1915.
13. Warren Harding died in office on August 2, 1923.
14. Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office on April 12, 1945.
15. John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
16. Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974.
This poll was conducted in 1982 by Professors Thomas Kelly and Douglas Lonnstrom, Directors of the Siena Research Institute, Siena College, Loudonville, New York. History professors in 102 colleges were asked to rate the First Ladies. In another poll, conducted by the Siena Research Institute in 1981, political scientists and historians were asked to rank presidents on a different scale. (See results in Appendix III.) The list above merges the results of the two polls, with scores rounded to the nearest tenth of 1 percent. It should be emphasized that both polls were conducted early in the first Reagan administration. No explanation was given for including some of the women who served as First Lady although not married to a president, such as Mary Arthur McElroy, Chester Arthur’s sister, and excluding others, such as Rose Cleveland, Grover Gleveland’s sister. The author is grateful to the Siena Research Institute for sharing this data.
* In the Tyler and Wilson administrations, the first wife of the respective presidents died and both men remarried while in office. In the Andrew Johnson presidency, both his wife and daughter served as First Lady. As a result, the total of First Ladies outnumbers that of presidents.
Results of a poll conducted in 1981 by Professors Thomas Kelly and Douglas Lonnstrom, Directors of the Siena Research Institute, Loudonville, New York. Political scientists and historians were asked to rank presidents on twenty different qualities or characteristics: background, party leadership, communication ability, relationship with congress, court appointments, handling of the U.S. economy, luck, ability to compromise, willingness to take risks, executive appointments, overall ability, imagination, domestic accomplishments, integrity, executive ability, foreign policy accomplishments, leadership ability, intelligence, avoidance of crucial mistakes, ranker’s overall view. The author is grateful to the Siena Research Institute for permission to cite these results here.
This is only one of many rankings of United States Presidents. For a review of literature on the subject, see David C. Nice, “The Influence of War and Party System Aging on the Ranking of Presidents,” Western Political Quarterly, vol. 37 (September 1984), pp. 443–455.
Results of poll conducted in 1982 by Professors Thomas Kelly and Douglas Lonnstrom, Directors of the Siena Research Institute, Siena College, Loudonville, New York. History professors in 102 colleges were asked to rate First Ladies. The professors came from 57 northern colleges and 45 southern colleges. It should be emphasized that the poll was conducted early in the first Reagan administration. The author is grateful to the Siena Research Institute for sharing this data.
Good Housekeeping editors evaluated the records of fifteen twentieth-century First Ladies and published the results in the July 1980 issue, p. 120. It should be noted that this ranking occurred before Ronald Reagan was elected, so Nancy Reagan is not included. Ida McKinley, whose husband was assassinated in September 1901, is also excluded, although technically she was a twentieth-century First Lady.
Although the Good Housekeeping overall ranking does not differ greatly from the historians’ ranking (see Appendix IV), the characteristics on which the women were judged are quite different and sometimes contradictory (e.g., traditionalist and feminist). Good Housekeeping editors pointed out that their evaluations were not intended to pit the record of one woman against that of another but merely to “call attention to the manner in which each has responded to the challenge of her unpaid job.”
Omitted from this list are presidents who served without a First Lady: widowers Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Arthur; bachelor Buchanan. Woodrow Wilson’s first wife, Ellen, died in 1914 and he married Edith in 1915. John Tyler’s first wife, Letitia, died in 1842 and he married Julia in 1844. William Henry Harrison’s wife had not yet arrived in the capital city when her husband died so she is omitted from the rankings.
This Siena Institute ranking for presidents was done in 2001; and it was done for First Ladies in 2008. Therefore, Laura Bush’s ranking was done at the end of eight years while her husband’s was after only one year, before his popularity dropped.
The author is grateful to Professors Thomas Kelly and Douglas Lonnstrom, Directors of the Siena Research Institute, Siena College, Loudonville, New York, for sharing this information. For more information, please see www.siena.edu/sri/surveys.asp.
