Early in U.S. history, most First Ladies were housewives charged with raising children and managing domestic affairs. Abigail Powers Fillmore was the first First Lady to hold a job outside the home. She was a teacher who taught Millard a basic education. Eliza McCardle Johnson also taught her husband, Andrew, to write. Lucy Webb Hayes was the first First Lady to graduate from college.
Sarah Childress Polk reviewed her husband’s speeches, copied correspondence, and highlighted newspaper articles while advising him. After Woodrow Wilson’s stroke in October 1919, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson restricted access to him, signed bills and letters by guiding Woodrow’s hand, and sent missives to Congress in his name, essentially running the executive office for his last 16 months in the biggest disability cover-up in US history—despite only attending finishing school.
Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt convinced her husband to remain in politics after he developed polio. As First Lady, she undertook a steady stream of diplomatic missions. As a delegate to the United Nations (1945 to 1952), she chaired the committee that developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She died in 1962 of miliary tuberculosis, 10 years after a cure was established. Rosalynn Smith Carter attended her husband’s cabinet meetings, served as a U.S. emissary to Central and South America, and chaired a mental health commission. Nancy Davis Reagan controlled press access to Ronald during his hospital stays, had his Chief of Staff Donald Regan fired, and advised her husband based on her astrologer’s advice.
Hillary Rodham Clinton became a Democrat at Wellesley College, where she served as student body president and gave a commencement address. She chaired the Arkansas Education Standards Committee when Bill was governor. As First Lady, she led health care reform efforts. After the White House, she was elected senator from New York and ran for president in 2016.
Eliza Johnson, Lucy Hayes, Ellen Axson Wilson, Lou Henry Hoover, Elizabeth “Bess” Wallace Truman, Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson, and Pat Ryan Nixon also played essential roles in advising their husbands during their presidencies.
First Ladies’ professions outside the home:
First Ladies’ functions expanded as they matured, and their roles in the nation advanced as it matured. Their occupations developed from domestic manager to teacher, lawyer, diplomat, Chief of Staff, and—for Edith Wilson—acting president. “Supportive” is the word history gives us. “Working” is the word the record supports.