W. H. Harrison Administration - Family Life

Family Life

Anna Tuthill Symmes was born July 25, 1775, in Flathook, New Jersey. She was well-educated and had attended the Clinton Academy in Easthampton, New York, and a private school in New York City. In 1795 her father, Colonel John Cleves Symmes, a chief justice in the New Jersey Supreme Court who served in the Continental Congress, acquired over 500,000 acres in what is now southwestern Ohio. Appointed to a judgeship in the Northwest Territory, he relocated the family to an area near modern-day Cincinnati. On a visit to relatives in nearby Lexington, Kentucky, in the spring of 1795 she met William Henry Harrison who happened to be in town on military business. The two fell in love and eloped on November 25, 1795, in North Bend in what is today Ohio. It was not until Harrison achieved fame as a soldier in the years ahead that he was accepted by Judge Symmes.

By all accounts the Harrisons had a happy marriage. Their...

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