American Historical Ephemera & Photography

1p, 5 x 7.75 in. (light soil, later pencil notations, small hole near bottom center not affecting text).

Harrison writes to J. L. Whitney, Esq.: "I enclose herein an Autograph of my much lamented Husband [not present], hoping it will not arrive too late. Also a Note, within to a nephew of mine, & also our Son in law [notes not present]. You will perceive it was written in haste." 

Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, the wife of President William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), served as First Lady for just one month before her husband succumbed to pneumonia and died in office. Illness had prevented her from accompanying her husband to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration, and her husband died while she still remained in Ohio. Anna Harrison survived her husband by more than twenty years, living out the remainder of her years at North Bend until it burned in 1858, thereafter residing with her last surviving child.