Julia Tyler was very nearly not first lady at all. She repeatedly rebuffed the advances of newly-widowed President, John Tyler, who had lost his first wife Letitia to a kidney ailment in 1842. After a devastating cannon explosion aboard the USS Princeton killed her father in 1844, she turned to the President for comfort and married him later that year. She was 24; “His Accidency” was 54. His swift remarriage and their large age difference created scandals in proper society, something that she was already used to. Long Island native Julia had posed for a department store ad when she was 19 that called her the “Rose of Long Island.” At the time, wealthy socialites such as herself did not accept payment for appearances. Nonetheless, the revered beauty attracted many suitors and eventually became one of the most popular and influential First Ladies of her time.
The vivacious Tyler was widely known as a fashionista and social maven, largely because she was the first known First Lady to court newspaper coverage that both reported her social events and aimed to raise her public profile. She was, in many ways, the first First Lady to be the modern equivalent of celebrity. She did so by befriending a reporter who dubbed her the grand “Presidentress,” and went into more glowing details about her clothes, skin and personality rather than the specifics of what happened at any given event. She also sought to have her attractive and youthful features disseminated as far as possible with oil paintings and photographs.
Her clothing, receptions and preferences were as regal as possible for a President’s wife. One example is typical of her fashion preferences: at one event, she dressed in a long-trained gown with a peacock-feathered headdress and sat on a plat form with other “vestal virgins” as she received guests.
She was known to drive a coach led by eight matching white Arabian horses. Tyler even tried to acquire an exotic an Italian greyhound to accompany her as she walked through Washington, DC. For all her ornate taste, she also introduced the tradition of having the President enter to “Hail to the Chief” when he entered an event, had a song named after her, and was the first First Lady to publicly dance in the White House. Modest she was not, but her efforts to inject the Presidency with prestige and pomp did not go unfulfilled.
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