Eliza Johnson

Eliza Johnson (born October 4, 1810, probably Greeneville, Tennessee, U.S.—died January 15, 1876, Greeneville) was an American first lady (1865–69), the wife of Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the United States.

Eliza McCardle was the only child of John McCardle, a shoemaker and innkeeper, and Sarah Phillips McCardle. While the McCardle family Bible recorded that Eliza was born in Greeneville, Tennessee, other sources assert that she was born near Telford, Tennessee, and that her family moved to Greeneville during her childhood. She was educated at home and at the Rhea Academy. In 1826 she met Johnson, an aspiring tailor, and they wed on May 17, 1827. According to local folklore, when she first saw Johnson (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. Contrary to a popular myth, however, she did not teach him to read and write.

Although Eliza Johnson encouraged his political ambitions, she did not enjoy the limelight that his successes attracted, 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. While her husband served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–53), Johnson and the children remained in Tennessee, and she did not make her first trip to Washington, D.C., until 1860, well after her husband’s election to the Senate (1857–62). Indeed, she spent very little time in Washington before he became president, following the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. 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 first lady, Johnson left social duties to her daughter, Martha Patterson, who won praise for her simple ways and hard work. Finding the White House (then known as the Executive Mansion) in disrepair, Johnson used a congressional appropriation of $30,000 to refurbish it, and she arranged for two cows to live on the White House lawn to provide fresh milk. Her announcement that she and her family were “plain people from the mountains of Tennessee, brought here through a national calamity” helped to disarm potential critics, who were ready to ridicule the Johnson women for their lack of sophistication.

From her second-floor room at the White House, Johnson may have exerted more influence over her husband’s decisions than was apparent at the time. She routinely read newspapers and shared their contents with her husband, and she closely followed his impeachment by the House and trial in the Senate (though she did not attend the proceedings). Some historians have concluded that Andrew Johnson relied on the counsel of his wife and daughters as much as he relied on anyone. After her husband’s acquittal, Johnson declared, “I knew he’d be acquitted, I knew it.”

When the Johnson presidency ended in 1869, the couple returned to Greeneville. In 1875 Andrew Johnson was elected to the Senate but died later that year. Eliza Johnson was too sick to attend his funeral, and she died six months later at her daughter’s home, on a farm outside Greeneville. The couple was buried at what is now the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in Greeneville.