Page:Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state (Vol. I).djvu/40

36 the library was ransacked, and the men filled their foraging bags with worthless law papers and then quitted the house. The box thus saved contained the Governor’s correspondence with Congress, with the Commander-in-Chief and State Officers.”

There is no question but that “Pretty Susan” and her two predecessors shared the distinction and honor accorded their noted spouse. But they had their part of his great misfortunes also. So it is doubtful if their lives were as peaceful as that, for instance, of his oldest daughter Ann, who married the young officer at whom Symmes was at first disposed to curl his lip.

Ann Symmes is said to have been a particularly well dispositioned girl, and a very even tempered wife and mother. The high place reached by her husband seems never to have excited her. She was, for one thing, a semi invalid or thought she was. It took an unusually self centered woman not to age early in those days and many a staid cap covered hair without a silver thread.

Ann was destined to become the wife of one president of the United States, and the grandmother of another President—both of whom made their home for many years on the farm at the mouth of Great Miami River, where so much history has been handed down through the centuries. She was to live her entire adult life here, from the time of her marriage to William Henry Harrison. For Ann Symmes Harrison did not share her husband’s brief tenancy of the White House. She never even went to Washington.

Following his marriage to Ann, William Henry Harrison had built a log house at North Bend, bought a 2,000-acre farm between the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers, and here made his home. His public duties frequently called him away for extended periods — as territorial governor of Indiana, with headquarters at Vincennes (where John Scott Harrison was born) and as major general in command of the army during the War of 1812. At the close of the war Harrison resigned from the army, was elected to Congress in 1816, again from the Cincinnati district and served three years, following which he was elected to the Ohio State Senate in 1819, and then United States Senator from Ohio in 1825. He resigned from the United States Senate in 1828 to become minister to Columbia.

During these later years the farm was operated and managed by his son, John Scott Harrison, who had a distinct liking for the pursuits of agriculture. In the early twenties a sizable tract of land had been set apart for John Scott in the southwest corner of the big farm, and on this his father had erected what was then regarded as an imposing brick mansion of semi-classic colonial design. Much of the material in this house was shipped by boat down the Ohio River, after having been transported across the Allegheny Mountains from the East. All glass was said to have come from England.

William Henry Harrison was elected president of the United States in 1840. He died after barely a month in office. His death took place April 4,