America’s Most Overlooked First Lady, Anna Harrison

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

America’s shortest presidency produced one of its most overlooked First Ladies. Anna Harrison didn’t even make it to the White House before William Henry Harrison skipped wearing a coat to his inauguration, caught a cold, and died from pneumonia just 31 days later. Shaped by revolution and a New York education, Anna defied expectations, from eloping against her father’s wishes to running school on the Ohio frontier. Her story is a reminder that history is often shaped by the women it overlooks. If you’d like to submit a question for Sharon to answer, head to ThePreamble.com/podcast – we’d love to hear from you there. And be sure to read our weekly magazine at ThePreamble.com – it’s free! Join hundreds of thousands of people who still believe understanding is an act of hope. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:38.5	pal, this is it. It's a joyful crowd pleaser with a ton of heart. It's good. Song Song
0:47.2	Blue in Cinema's New Year's Day. Book tickets now. Hello, friends. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're talking about another
0:58.1	first lady who, guess what, also never made it into the White House. If you've been listening,
1:04.8	you'll know that this has been a recurring theme of the past few president's wives, Rachel Jackson,
1:10.1	Hannah Van Buren, and now Anna Harrison.
1:13.6	But this time the tragedy wasn't the First Ladies. It was the presidents. Anna's husband,
1:19.6	William Henry Harrison, died just one month into his presidency. And while Anna technically held the
1:25.3	title of First Lady for about 30 days, she hadn't even
1:28.3	finished preparing for the trip to Washington, D.C., before the news of her husband's death reached
1:34.4	her. I'm Sharon McMahon, and this is the Preamble podcast. Now back to our story.
1:53.2	In 1779, legend has it that a man named John Sims galloped out of New York City.
2:04.5	The Revolutionary War was raging and John, wearing a British military uniform, flew past one red coat encampment after another.
2:10.1	What the British didn't know was that Sims was an officer in the Continental Army and tucked into his traveling clothes with him was his four-year-old daughter, Anna.
2:17.5	John made it to his destination without being discovered and was able to deliver young Anna to
2:22.3	her final destination, the home of her maternal grandparents on Long Island.
2:28.8	Three years earlier, John's wife, Anna's mother, had died suddenly.
2:33.4	John and his wife had already raised a daughter, Maria,
2:36.0	who was 13 years older than Anna, and Maria was likely, safely away at boarding school.
	...

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