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Harriet Rebecca Lane
Harriet Rebecca Lane Johnston (May 9, 1830 - July 3, 1903), niece of perpetual
bachelor James Buchanan, acted as First Lady of the United States from 1857 to
1861.
Harriet Lane was the youngest child of Elliott Tole Lane, a merchant, and
Jane Buchanan Lane. An orphan after the death of her father when she was 11
years old (her mother had died two years earlier), she requested that her
favourite uncle, James Buchanan, be appointed her legal guardian.
Harriet was a popular hostess during the four years of the Buchanan
presidency. While in the White House, she used her position to promote social
causes, such as improving the living conditions of Native Americans in
reservations. She also made a point of inviting artists and musicians to White
House functions. For both her popularity and her advocacy work, she has been
described as the first of the modern first ladies.
Buchanan often warned her against "rushing precipitately into matrimonial
connections," and she waited until she was almost 36 to marry. She married Henry
Elliott Johnston, a Baltimore banker. Within the next 18 years she lost her
uncle, her two fine young sons, and her husband.
Thereafter she decided to live in Washington. She had acquired a sizable art
collection, largely of European works, which she bequeathed to the government.
Accepted after her death in 1903, it inspired an official of the Smithsonian
Institution to call her First Lady of the National Collection of Fine Arts.
In addition, she had dedicated a generous sum to endow a home for invalid
children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It became a renowned
pediatric facility; the Harriet Lane Outpatient Clinics serve thousands of
children today, and the widely-used manual for pediatric house officers, The
Harriet Lane Handbook, bears her name.
She is buried at Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.
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